#the pawn's revenge (killing stalking but less fucked up)

[bloody-wonder]

Top five mangas?? 👀👀

thanks i'm gonna include manhwa too tho bc i read it more often :)

semantic error made me unlock hitherto undreamt of levels of fun that can best be compared to the profound enjoyment a hetero woman experiences when watching a really good self-indulgent romcom. i previously thought i'm only into exceptionally fucked up bl but this manhwa taught me i'm not above very basic romance if it's well-written, hilarious and sexy and frames weirdness as something that can be appealing and awaken desires

killing stalking was the first bl manhwa i ever read and what an introduction to the genre it was! it's very good but very dead dove do not it so i wouldn't rec it to just anyone. for me, it was very fun binging the whole thing overnight bc why sleep when you can instead plunge deep into the darkest corners of human psyche while scrolling cartoons

twittering birds never fly has the audacity to maintain that slowburn since *checks wikipedia* 2011?? what the fuck?! if semantic error is a romcom twittering birds is a soap opera with no end in sight - and it has me in a chokehold. yashiro is one of the most characters of all time, i hope he admits his feelings for doumeki sometime before i turn 50 but it's still fun to watch him get into increasingly dramatic situations in order to avoid doing just that lol

painter of the night is just self-indulgent. i don't think the plot is any good at all and i don't particularly like the main character but i'm sufficiently compensated for these flaws by the historical setting and yoon seungho. the joseon period costumes are just so fun to look at - at one point i went down a rabbit hole researching those fascinating gat hats. more bl should be set in the past tbh but it probably takes more time and research for the creators. and yoon seungho is just your classic bad boy you want to fix and do in fact fix. the drrrrama of it tho!

the cornered mouse dreams of cheese / the carp on the chopping block jumps twice is probably the least well-known on this list? this short two volume manga was recced to me by a friend and i really liked it bc it features a protag struggling with his sexuality in a way that to me read very aro. it's also about the quarter-life crisis so. all the themes very near and dear to my heart lol

[ryik-the-writer]

Chapter 28: The Missing Pan

A03

          Chapter 1: Pan meets a Wendy

·         Chapter 2: Scars (Felix’s Story)

·         Chapter 3: Day One

·         Chapter 4: Revenge and Fireflies

·         Chapter 5: Brighter than Stars

·         Chapter 6: filler: The Tigress

·         Chapter 7: Operation Spotless!

·         Chapter 8: Operation Spotless: Reporters Down

·         Chapter 9: A Dance with the Devil

·         Chapter 10: filler: Felix and the Pancake

·         Chapter 11: The Girl with Blue Eyes pt. 1

·         Chapter 12: The Girl with Blue Eyes pt. 2

·         Chapter 13: The Girl With Blue Eyes: Underground

·         Chapter 14. Recovery

·         Chapter 14.2 Recovery some more

·         Chapter 15: Trapped

        Chapter 16: Filth

        Chapter 17: Fairydust pt. 1

        Chapter 18: Fairydust pt. 2

        Chapter 19: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 3

        Chapter 20: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 2

        Chapter 21: The Mystery of the Dead Nun pt. 3

        Chapter 22: Reflections pt. 1

        Chapter 23: Reflections pt. 2

        Chapter 24: Closing

        Chapter 25: Felix is helping Pan

        Chapter 26: Temporary Fix

        Chapter 27: The Search Begins

It was like a bizarre book club meeting, except there was no book and the meeting was held at Tink’s forest of a living room.

He had found Pan’s broken cellphone nearly three days ago, and hadn’t seen hide or hair of him since.

He was worried, especially as he saw less and less of Wendy roaming the town looking for him.

No, he wasn’t stalking her that would be creepy. He was just watching her from afar, usually behind buildings, in case Pan reappeared by her side.

He was worried about the little shit, even if he’d rather not think about him and what they were—or rather what they had been.

Their relationship was on Pan’s terms, as it had been the night August returned to Storybrooke two years ago.

It had been just a glitch on their timeline, a moment in history that would go unrecorded.

He had returned to Storybrooke after the money he pawned from several of his father’s tools ran out.

He was tired and sore, not sure whether he was back to ask for forgiveness or to take more from his loving father. His motorcycle was nearly out of gas, his tires shreds of rubber attached to rims.

He hadn’t realized the clusterfuck he’d road in on. That Storybrooke was practically on lockdown after Jekyll killed those two girls—and nearly a third, he’d find out later.

And—for his own sanity—Pan was waiting at the town line for the psychopath to return, with the blunt end of his camera at that.

As his head was spinning from being clabbered over the head from the hit, Pan had kicked him onto his back.

“Shit,” he had said. “You’re not him.”

“Lucky for me,” August deadpanned, wobbling as he picked himself up. “Want to explain why the hell you did that?”

“Monster hunting,” Pan had stated, staring at him suspiciously, offering him no assistance.

It was close to 3 a.m., a completely unreasonable hour for anyone to be running around—travelers or off-their-knocker journalists.

“Yeah,” August muttered, grabbing his bike and preparing to head into the town.

“Everything’s closed,” Pan said. “You’re better off sleeping in the woods.”

It was none of the little shit’s business. In fact it was probably best if he kept his entire being to himself. For he knew his father had taken out a report to the police.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Thanks for not giving me a concussion.”

“You might as well come back with me.”

The weight of those words still clung to August’s brain this very day.

That brutal, flirtatious, broken boy…

“What’s this about?

August looked up. Tink, Felix and Lily Tigress were surrounding him, trying to figure as much as he was what the hell was going on.

August stood, feeling the mix of emotions from the people in the room.

“Pan’s missing.” He said, simply.

The reactions that followed fit everyone perfectly.

Tinkerbell scoffed and rolled her eyes while Felix seemed to melt with fear. Tigress snorted.

“Have you checked all the holes in the city?” she teased.

“And ditches,” he replied humorlessly. “He’s not anywhere.”

“Maybe check in the depths of hell.” Tink muttered, flopping down on her couch.

“What happened,” Felix inquired, obviously the only other person in the room that had general concern.

“I have no idea,” August sighed.

“It’s probably nothing!” Tink exclaimed, visibly aggravated. “He’s always pulling shit like this, we all know it!” she looked around at everyone, their eyes dropping .

“I don’t know this time—” August began before Tink cut him off.

“He’s fine! He’s off screwing someone or ruining a life. He’ll come back and continue as normal.”

August blinked hard and reached into his pocket. In a flash he threw Pan’s broken, dead cellphone onto Tink’s coffee table, an inch away from Tigress’s boots.

The occupants of the room stared at the device like it was something that had just fallen from the sky, as if they had no idea what to make of it.

“I found this the other night at the docks,” August explained, swallowing a lump. “I’ve been looking for him ever since. It died a few hours after I found it.”

Felix gripped his kneecaps until his fingers turned white. Tigress glanced at him and then at Tink’s still shoulders, wishing she could reach into her back and unknot every single one of her muscles.

“It could be an accident,” Tink said, her mind numb.

“There’s something wrong here, Tink,” August said. “Something I don’t think we’ve dealt with before.”

Tink nodded slightly. She could accept that this was a bit odd, but she wasn’t ready to relent to a search just yet.

“Did you go through the phone, see who he called last?” Felix inquired.

A cold sweat ran down August’s back.

“Yeah…it…it was me,” he looked straight ahead, trying to avoid Tink’s direct gaze. “The night he wrote that story about you.”

Tink barely moved, the only indication that she heard August was the darkening of her pupils.

“Last time I saw him was the morning after that when Wendy showed up and…all the other stuff happened.”

“Have you talked to her?” Tigress asked. “Why isn’t she here?”

August thought about the blonde enigma who spent the better part of two days searching for the wild boy…

And then she stopped…

Not from falling into a fate like Pan’s, but rather a strange dark haired man seemed to be gypsying her away from her task.

Maybe she had the same mindset as Tink, that Pan was somewhere safe and sound but avoiding the rest of the world.

Or perhaps she’d finally realized she deserved to use her time the way she wanted and not focus so much on Pan.

When he’d see her in town, her gaze would occasionally stray to the streets and into shops, looking for him without trying.

But she wasn’t alone. There was someone else with her, some dark entity that always seemed to be just out of both their line of site.

“She’s looking for him,” August concluded.

“Have you gone to Graham?”

“No, not yet,” he admitted.

Tink smiled bitterly. “There’s your answer,”

August leaned forward. “Do you really think Graham is going to take this seriously with Pan’s track record?”

“That’s the best thing to do!” Tink yelled. “He’s not our problem.”

“Yeah, he is,”

“No he’s fucking not! We have nothing to do with any of this!”

“Yeah we do!”

“He’s your little fuck buddy not mine!”

A wave of sand coursed through August’s throat, cutting him off.

“Okay, that’s enough!” Felix finally jumped in, evenly meeting Tink’s glare. “He’s right, we have to help.”

“Are you kidding me, Felix!” Tink exploded.

“What he did was terrible,” Felix injected, putting everything everyone in the room had held in for days now. “But if you turn your back on him and something really is wrong, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Because he is family, Tink. He’s one of us.”

He stepped forward, keeping his distance after taking her stiff posture into account.

“And you know he didn’t do any of this to hurt you, even if he did,”

Tink scoffed. “I know that. But I’m so sick of him thinking rules don’t apply to him and that he’s invincible,” she paced a bit, thinking about the wild-haired boy to always brought so much chaos into their lives. Who was more trouble than any of them knew what to do with.

“What if he’d been alone that night?” She wondered aloud, knowing firsthand the type of cruelty Mother Superior could enact when pushed too far.

Pan was in trouble, and this time it was more serious than ever of them had ever seen before.

He was usually good at getting himself out of messes and suffering the consequences on his own. But things were different this time. This time he was somewhere none of them could find.

Tink groaned, tucking her anger away for later.

“When was the last day you talked to Wendy?” she sighed in August’s direction.

His lip twitched in gratification. “The day she told me Pan was missing.”

“Then Lily and I will check with her first.” Tink said, voice strong with leadership. “You and Felix check the paper and Graham and all his usual haunts.”

Before Felix could ask for more, Tink was out the door.

Lily gave the men a shrug before following her friend, not looking to cause a fight with the fiery blonde.

Felix sighed in relief when they finally left, trying his best to stay calm. Last thing he needed was to fall into a seizure.

“That takes care of that,” August teased. “You ready?”

Felix looked over at him, frowning heavily. He had no feeling for August, good or bad. The two didn’t see or speak to each other than the few times he left Pan’s place.

He wasn’t a bad person from what Felix could gather, but he wasn’t the best influence on Pan. He was too casual, not interested in settling down.

Adding gasoline to the fire of Pan’s soul.

Still, obviously he cared about him enough that he cared if he was missing or not, so some points were warranted.

“We’ll need to start with Graham first,”

“Why’s that?”

Felix frowned. “I might know the reason he’s missing.”

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Pan wasn’t sure where to target his latest wave of sickness from.

The swaying ship, the dehydration, or the infection building around his numb wrists from the metal cuffs?

He was more than certain he was developing some kind of bladder infection as well.

God he was tired.

Jones hadn’t been to see him in a day and a half, or at least that’s what he was estimating judging by the light that was coming in thorough the cracks of the ship.

He wondered what he was doing, especially to Wendy. Had he hurt her? Was he torturing her right now to get information out of her?

What did this asshole hope to accomplish keeping him locked up? Why didn’t he just off him already?

Or maybe this was it. Maybe he just wanted to kill him slowly.

As he nodded in and out of consciousness, he caught images of the people in his life. Wendy and Felix up front, Tink, August, and Tigress just behind them. Even Glass and Gold, and deeper in the shadows, Belle.

Each time he woke up, they would vanish, and Pan wouldn’t remember who he was dreaming about.

The smell of salt was enough to make him vomit now. He was dying, and he was doing so cruelly slow.

Would any of the people he kept seeing in that place between sleep and awake ever know what had happened to him.

Was anyone looking for him?

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The last few days had become sort of a new routine for Wendy. She’d leave her apartment at the crack of dawn and visit Pan’s apartment…knocking just in case he’d come home.

But he hadn’t, and she’d let herself in and feed his fuzzy orange cat who had yet to be utterly concern about his master’s disappearance.

It was comforting feeding the large cat without Pan’s interference, she thought. No one to pick fun at her at every opportunity. No one to push her into a corner, away from her safest places.

No one to pick fun at her at every opportunity. No one to push her into a corner, away from her safest places.

It was unsettling, Pan’s absence. But there was an odd peace in the air. One that didn’t quite fit in Storybrooke’s atmosphere, but one that was welcome. If only for a short time.

Each day without the wild boy was like a blurry vacation: you knew each day was passing by but the details were unclear.

And somehow Pan was blurring from her memory as well.

She’d wake up in the dead of night with a glimpse of him in the air above her head.

Then he’d disappear, and she’d fall asleep without concern.

It felt wrong, to brush him off after all they’d been through, even in her sleep.

But there was an odd freedom to letting him go, especially if he didn’t want to be found.

She stared at the number on her cell phone glaring back at her, the one she’d called constantly in the last four days.

He doesn’t want to be found, she reminded herself. Calling him again would be fruitless.

She knew this, it was imbedded in her brain at this point.

Yet she pressed his number again and listened as his voice mail immediately came up.

It’s Pan. Call me back.

No, she decided solemnly, she wouldn’t.

“Hi, Pan…it’s…it’s me again.” Wendy chuckled. “I guess you know that by now…”

She paused, knowing if she were quiet for too long she’d have to start over.

She didn’t want to start over. She wanted to go forward.

“Look,” she sighed. “I can’t keep doing this with you. Everyday it’s a fight with you and I have no idea why. I don’t know what I did the other day to make you leave like that…but you need…”

She paused again.

“Well I don’t know what you need o honestly, but it’s something you have to figure out for yourself.”

She considered hanging up then, but she didn’t want to leave him on such a harsh note.

“I really hope you try, Pan, because I don’t want to fight with you anymore. After everything, I really want us to be—“

The voicemail beeped, inquiring if she wanted to start over or if she was satisfied with her message.

She didn’t want to start over.

So she hung up and headed to the docks.

Killian was there, as he always seemed to be.

Perhaps it was her need for new freedom that silenced the warning bells in her head, that made her drop the walls and inhibitions that had clung to her like a second skin during the last several months.

She approached him without fear, without any type of concern holding her back.

And she didn’t question him when he slid a manila folder into his leather coat.

“Is dinner still on the table?” she questioned.

He tilted his head, amused, though his pulse was racing. “I thought lunch was the next step.”

Wendy shrugged, stepping a bit closer. “I’m feeling…braver than I did yesterday.”

He chuckled, concealing the folder further into his jacket for dear life. “Well then, Miss Wendy Darling, tomorrow night?”

She smiled, relieved. “I’d like that.”

He watched her leave, noting the little pep in her step.

Such a lovely girl, he thought, and more malleable than he had originally foreseen. Jones thought he was going to have to push her more to fall into his grip, but it would seem she was finally crumbling.

He made his way back to this ship quickly, opening the folder full of information for his backup plan.

He stepped into his cabin, breaking out his best rum. This was a small victory after all.

Some of the glasses on his counter shook lightly, so little they could almost be missed. Jones rolled his eyes. He’d forgotten to feed his captive again…and water him for that matter.

Whoops.

He still hadn’t told him why he’d requested those files, what he was digging for.

Who he was searching for.

And how Miss Darling was involved was still being revealed, but time was running short.

He had been given orders to find out now.

He spread his new leverage across the table, frowning a bit.

The two boys, preteens by the look of it, caught his eye first. He hated targeting kids. It was so pointless.

His eyes traveled to the woman next. He could see bits of Wendy in her, especially in the shape of her eyes. She had the man’s jaw however…and his frown, he noticed with amusement.

A tidy little family in danger of meeting the blunt end of his gun.

Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, he decided as he hid the folder. Hopefully, very soon, Wendy would tell him what he wanted to know.

The pipes sang from Pan’s struggle again.

He was already a dead man walking, and too tight-lipped to save now.

Feeding time.

[permian-tropos]

might as well set down my full case for the extreme shippability of gallirae, for that twitter person’s sake (that’s my excuse but hey, I can vent by being positive about things I like)

step one would be to explain why I think they have canonical sexual tension and the point I like start with is the fact that Adea tells Sloane she wanted to “be with them both”. we already know she’s sleeping with Rax and honestly book 1 leaves plenty of room to imagine Adea has a thing for Sloane so why don’t we imagine Adea is bisexual as hell and has had a thing for the both of them, and wanted a sugar mommy and a sugar daddy simultaneously but if they couldn’t get along she’d pick one

Sloane is the one who doesn’t see it like that. but Adea admires Sloane for being ambitious and powerful and in a position to rule the Empire and create a new galactic order. this is the same case she makes for Rax, and she seems frustrated that Sloane can’t see how well they’d go together.

given that Adea and Rax’s only scene together has them talking about whether Sloane will join them and Rax is the one who’s confident about it (and Adea is the hesitant one) I feel free to imagine that an initial condition of their relationship was “we’re going to be a hot problematic threesome with Sloane”. and if Adea can ship them together why can’t I?

but moving on. why do I imagine Rax being into Sloane? well besides the fact that he keeps her around and stokes her ambitions even as he knows she wants him dead, the fact that he flatters her and makes himself her advisor even though he outranked her in book 1, and talks about how much he wants her to be a part of his galaxy-ruling business.

there’s also the fact that he gives her a mixtape of his most emotionally resonant piece of music, the opera that he associates with escaping a life of poverty and misery. it’s not an act of manipulation, because there’s no clear intended effect, it’s just a way for him to share a piece of himself in a rather awkward and indirect way. he makes choices on Jakku over and over that avoid killing Sloane in the moment, and his final moments aren’t anger at her for defeating him but regret over his own failures. he might assume the planet will explode or that she’ll be taken prisoner by the New Republic and he could let that be revenge but he wants Sloane to live and rule his Empire. he considers her a “fellow outcast” likely from their backgrounds being lower class which Sloane responds to and doesn’t dispute.

why would Sloane be into Rax? well there’s the fact that she considers herself “seduced” by him and asks herself if she’s “falling for his strange way” after he gives her a flirty smirk during the Shadow Council meeting even though in that moment she’s furious at him. “she hates him, but she admires him too”. a lot of the metaphorical language her POV scenes use to describe her fear, hatred, or apprehension of Rax also have a suggestive element to them, whether he’s a sea before a storm or a snake in her bed or a predator who wants to pick out and eat the juiciest bits of her flesh and at that point I have to blush just retelling what’s written in the book! the scene where she listens to the music brings back the ocean metaphor but has it be a “gentle wave that calls her out to sea” (bear in mind she’s in bed while she’s listening to it) and “its ethereal beauty haunts her”. since the ocean has been used to describe Rax and the opera itself represents him, it feels like a metaphor for a sexual encounter — or Sloane’s desire for one.

I think it’s extremely easy to read canon where Sloane is attracted to Rax and finds him intimidating and overwhelming for that reason, and she is especially disgusted and angry and put off by him any time he does something that seems to Zone her as a platonic political ally or a pawn in his game. she takes a lot of his betrayals extremely personally, in ways she doesn’t with characters like Vidian or even Adea. she is basically cyberstalking Rax throughout book 2 and real stalking him throughout book 3 and she has perfectly good political reasons for it but the intense emotions attached could be both dread of his creepiness and deep Frustration. she has several moments where she mentions having no children or husband or wife and you could imagine her career with the evil Empire as the war went on has been very unhealthy and draining and isolating. she’s a bit deprived and starting to get depressed about it, though she weathered it for a long time. loneliness takes its toll on everyone eventually.

so you could read Rax and Sloane as both being hampered in their capacity for healthy romance by their ambitions and flaws and emotional hangups and general evilness. Rax is avoidant and vague and nihilistic about his desire for Sloane, and Sloane is aggressive and bitter and fearful about her desire for Rax.

so obviously the idea of them overcoming these roadblocks and succumbing to their desires is Hot As Fuck

and I consider them to be extremely hot when they’re in conjunction with each other because they’re obviously terrible people but they complement each other’s terribleness. they have two different strains of fascist brain worms and their collusion and subsequent falling out is to me a great place to pick apart the toxicity of both their ideologies. their ability to destroy each other’s faith in their own megalomaniac space nazi delusions is HOT because tearing down fascist delusions is good and narratively cathartic.

the fact that they’re locked in mortal combat is kind of necessary to this. they’re not going to reject a whole ideology if there isn’t an extreme pressure to do so. this is why I enjoy their moments together in canon. particularly with Sloane’s hatred — everything Rax does calls her faith in the Empire into question and it might not be his intention and the struggles might not be romanticizable but their canon doesn’t have to end up in a romantic or pleasant situation for it to set up fascinating conflicts.

they’re also aesthetically hot. Rax is described as pale and dark haired and black-eyed and he smirks a lot and says corny pretentious crap and wears sumptuous red robes and listens to opera and has a shipboard garden. he also has a tragic backstory as a cult-raised orphan on a desert world, conscripted and groomed for his position as the Contingency by Darth Emperor Sheev himself! so he’s a sad traumatized fuckboy too, teeming with suppressed self-loathing and coping mechanisms. he deserved to get murdered and I appreciate that he does but I still find him a glorious and perhaps personally relatable disaster. his deep fixation on and love of stories should technically be relatable to everyone on here but for me it seems to resonate especially strongly.

Sloane is the one with an official character design and she is Very Hot with her dark complexion and broad shoulders and handsome features only slightly touched by age. her hair is a bit long for an Imperial (not too many women overall) and she canonically is pleased with it and rightly so, it’s gorgeous, and the white streak is oddly cute. and she’s also got this stern commanding air but you can imagine her being suppressed about various desires just like Rax is and so obviously it’s great to imagine those desires breaking through. she is kind of a jock nerd, a former boxer who also loves research and libraries and math. her determination and badassery is as aesthetically enjoyable as her moments of fatigue and despair and folly. she’s a complicated person, with plenty of moments of badness and a fair amount of potential for goodness. and she has many moments from POV sections where you could extrapolate into a quirk or peculiar trait, instead of considering the quirkiness artistic license (ie. the ghost retinue, her being overly familiar with or possessive of people in her thoughts). she’s snarky and casually self-centered and staunch in her ideologies but also constantly suppressing empathy or unease.

I like the fact that Rax is a rather flamboyant and effeminate man and Sloane is a pragmatic and masculine woman. I know it’s bad to villify gender noncomformity but frankly I just am super weak for that het dynamic, it works well with my own gender feelings, sue me

the ship comes packaged with so many aesthetics and features; a cursed sort of wasteland with Jakku, the Opera, failed attempts at galactic conquest, a viable side OT3 with Adea, Palpatine’s bullshit hanging over both of them, plenty of action and intrigue, options for canon divergences where they rule side by side, or divergences where they are forced to expel their fascist brain worms and start on a road of ideological and emotional recovery.

they are given a ton of parallels in canon, with their backstories trying to stow away on ships to escape their homeworlds as children, their weird fixation on predators and prey, to their desires for revenge or glory, their willingness to dispose of their allies, often using the same language culminating in them finishing each other’s sentences, improvising bluffs and distractions tailored to the other’s personality on the fly.

and their relationship, such as it is, ends with extreme violence and cruelty and suffering. given their high levels of participation in the big bad autocratic space regime it’s no less than either of them deserved. neither of them work through their deep and extreme issues. yet it feels like there’s room for both to change, since Rae questions her faith in the Empire and Gallius questions Palpatine’s narrative of destiny.

so if I imagine them together but unable to throw down with murder duels (because they decide to care about each other) they might be forced to completely change, and that’s a really compelling dynamic arc

and there you have it. that’s not even everything. but it’s a lot of it and it’s way way more than is ever necessary to justify a ship.