#these people just trying to live their lives like everyone else? these poor children orphaned in the blink of an eye?

[smile-files]

oh yeah, i think it's important to differentiate between the ideas of a "jewish ethnostate" and a "jewish homeland", as a jew myself especially --

of course we deserve a place where we feel safe, a place that puts emphasis on caring for us and not treating us like dirt. but that is not the same as a place that allows ONLY us to be there. (and we are talking about a mass of land, not an affinity club or anything -- we're talking about somewhere people live. who gets to be a part of it is not something you should be policing on lines of race or religion.) we have no right to lay claim to land and force other people out of it. we have no right to a jewish ethnostate.

"oh but if there are any non-jews in our land they'll treat us badly like they always have!!!" no, that's just cynical nonsense. if anything, you're letting the antisemites win by agreeing with the omnipresence of their bigotry. yes, tons of people have been horrible to us. that won't get better by running away from them and hurting other people in the process.

also, it is very worthy of note that jews and their ancestors have lived in palestine, for a great portion of history in fact, but were conquered multiple times by multiple empires and expelled to the diaspora. of course jews want to live in palestine! of course! but palestinians are just as indigenous to the land as we are -- we have absolutely NO right to kill them and kick them out and say it isn't their home (which is exactly what so many empires did to us, in the same land no less).

endorsing zionism and anti-palestinian rhetoric, as a jew, is hypocritical, cruel, and wrong. let palestine be free, as they (and we) deserve to be. they are facing the same terrors we have; let us stand with them.

[roguerogerss]

snow lands on top

pairing: coriolanus snow x covey reader

w/c: 3.2k

warnings: just fluff! a few sexual comments but nothing more, mentions of family deaths, reader is just a poor lil soul

(merry christmas my angels! if you’re having a hard time, i feel you! here’s some soft coryo lovin to help you through it. the holidays r a hard time for so so many people, and my inbox will always be open to anyone who needs someone who’ll understand <3 luv you the most, we’ll get through it all)

-

Christmas Eve. The soft patter of snowfall, the breeze from your half open window, the bustle of the Corso below. You'd been listening to the Christmas shoppers - stressed or unbothered - the kids playing in the snow, mothers and fathers dragging their children to holiday themed events. Laying around in bed all day in old silk had become your go-to on the run-up to Christmas.

You’d come to hate snowfall. It meant the sounds of merry families, playing outside together. It meant mourning for when you could do that, it meant resenting others, something that the Covey would never want for you.

Christmas was bittersweet. It had been for years, now. No gifts under your small, sad Christmas tree, no family gathering, no over-the-top dinner event, sometimes no dinner at all. You lived alone, in your little apartment which you could hardly afford, and had no family left since the war.

You remembered the good times, of course, that was the 'sweet' in all of the bitter. Remembering your mother's baking and the smell of sugar cookies and Christmas cake. The lavish real evergreen tree that made the ridiculously high ceilings of your apartment look low. The gifts, the dinner, curling up with a mug of hot milk on the plush sofa. You even thought of your Christmases back in District twelve. Never too fancy, never too many gifts, but a family, the Covey, music, a home.

Life after the war had been cruel to you. What once was a young girl, with a family wealthy enough to move her to the Capitol, had become a young woman with no one to turn to, and not a penny to her name. You didn't have the luxury of pretending like everything was fine, like you had your family's riches to fall back on. Everyone at the Academy had found out when you'd had to ask for a scholarship loan to pay for your tuition, one which you'd never be able to pay back.

That was something you'd always envied of a particular classmate of yours. Coriolanus Snow. Crassus Snow's baby boy. You knew he must've been penniless, as poor as a church mouse. But maybe you only knew that because your own circumstances were much the same. Coriolanus was smart about it, always looking classy from an outside perspective, never asking for money, never acting hungry. But, when looked into closer, you could easily see cracks.

His shoes were the same ones he'd had since first year at the Academy, and they must've been achingly too small for him. He'd eat only small amounts at school and pretend he was full up, but you'd seen him once, with no shirt on, and his ribs stuck out like a sore thumb. Wherever there was an academic prize that involved money, he was always trying his hardest to win, pulling out every stop, but if there was no monetary prize, he'd only do half as much.

You saw right through his act, always had, but instead of exposing him to everyone else out of jealousy, you'd helped him out whenever you could. Us poor orphans have to stick together, right?

You'd share food, give eachother your spare trolley tokens so you wouldn't have to walk the hour back to the Corso, discuss strategy over how to win said academic prizes, and split them with eachother when you did.

You'd become close friends, over the years, even although it was kept strictly as a secret from all of your other classmates. And so, when you heard a familiar voice floating in through your window, you smiled to yourself.

"Y/N?" You could only faintly hear him calling from the street, but you started up from your bed and yanked the window open fully so that you could hang out of it.

There he was, Coriolanus Snow, in all of his glory. Blonde curls full of white snowflakes, wrapped in what seemed to be a ratty fur coat, chittering away. You laughed when you saw him. "Coryo, what are you doing out? You'll freeze to death!"

"Wanted to come and make sure you were okay." He called back, and then looked around warily, almost as though he was checking the coast was clear before asking, "Can I come up?"

You nodded, "I'll buzz you in." And then you swiftly closed the window. Goosebumps had raised on your arms and chest and you'd be paying for the next year if you had to put the furnace on.

You crossed to your bedroom door, made your way down the hall, and pressed the buzzer, which always made the most abhorrent sound when it let whoever was outside, in.

You waited by the door, and soon enough, Coryo was coming bounding up the stairs, fur coat now in his hand, nose and cheeks bright red. You let him in and laughed as you took his coat from him and hung it up. "It's Tigris'. I don't have anything warm enough, but it's the rattiest old thing I've ever seen."

"It's quite something." You turned back to see him shivering, arms folded around his body to try to warm himself. "Oh, you poor lamb."

Your Covey accent had never faded. The Capitol had always looked down upon you for it, but Coryo blushed every time you spoke. "I'm fine, I'll be fine."

"But it's freezing in here, too. Come here." You opened the small cupboard in the hallway, which held a few random seasonal items, and pulled out two, old blankets. You smiled at Coriolanus as you draped one around his shoulders, and he smiled back, close enough to you that his breath was hitting your cheek.

"Thank you, honey." Coriolanus' eyes scanned your apartment, peering through the living room door and then your bedroom door, and he frowned when he saw just one Christmas decoration - your tiny little tree. His family was poor, but Tigris was creative, and they still managed to uphold some joy in the form of tinsel and stockings at Christmas time.

"What?" Your face dropped and you looked worried, placing a tender hand on Coryo's blanket-clad shoulder. "You look so sad."

"You just..." Coryo's voice trailed off, unsure of how to say what he meant without hurting, or offending you. "I mean, you don't have too much, do you?"

"Well, I thought you knew that." A crease had appeared between your brows and you sounded upset with him, dropping your hand from where it had previously sat. Coryo corrected himself quickly, shaking his head at you.

"No, I'm sorry, that came out wrong." He racked his brain for something to say that would make you feel better. The look on your face made his chest sting. "I don't know, would you want to spend Christmas with us?"

You cocked your head to the side, looking at him as though he was going insane. Maybe he was, he wasn't even sure what he was saying. He closed his eyes and ran and hand over his face, which brightened you up a bit. You laughed, and he laughed, and he felt his shoulders relax. Why was he so nervous? He never got nervous, not like this, anyway.

"We don't have much either, but it'd mean you weren't alone. I know how you feel, especially at this time of year." Coryo noticed the slight tinge of pink that had dawned your cheeks, and, on a whim, he reached out and, with two freezing fingers, tilted your head back so that you were looking at him. "You could come to our house, Tigris makes bread pudding, and we managed to get some beef mince this year, too. Maybe you could even sleep over tonight, and we could wake up together-"

"Coryo, you're rambling." You stopped him, you knew he could go on for hours, and, although the offer was tempting, and you enjoyed the idea of spending even more time around Coryo, you planned on turning him down. "Thank you. That sounds lovely, but I'd never want to intrude. No, the Covey wrote me to let me know they've installed a telephone in the town hall, I can call them for a couple minutes tomorrow, lift my spirits. I'll be fine."

You waved him off, and pulled your mother's old silk robe tighter around your body. You started towards the living room door, expecting Coryo to follow, maybe you'd sit together on the flaky sofa and talk for a few hours, but he didn't let you get far. He snatched your hand from your side, and when you turned to look at him, his blue eyes were filled with concern.

"Call them from our house." He wasn't going to let you off without a yes. "Please. I can't leave you alone, that's not fair. Plus, I've always wanted to meet them, haven't I?"

You took a breath and adjusted your hand in his. It felt nice, to have him be so affectionate. You could admit you were closer than most friends, the line between friendship and love always slightly blurred and maybe crossed over on more than one occasion, but it always felt good to have him near.

After careful consideration, and a few reassuring rubs at the back of your hand from Coryo, you finally gave in. "Are you sure? I don't mean to be a pain-"

"You're not. You could never be." He stepped closer and took your other hand, close enough to you that, if he leaned forward, your foreheads would be touching. "Honest, Tigris will be happy to have someone other than Grandma'am."

"And what about Grandma'am? I'm District, I don't think she'll like that-"

"She respects your family. It's not the right way, I know, but there are very few district people she doesn't mind. She knew your parents, always says they were very respectable people." A grimace crossed Coryo’s face, talking about his Grandma’am’s views in front of you. He’d agreed with her for most of his life, but that was until he met you, and that Covey accent finally made snow melt and changed his mind.

"Really?" Your face had lit up. The idea of anyone from the Capitol accepting you, no, respecting you, was something you’d only ever dreamt of.

"Really." Coryo smiled, now, and then he joked, “What an honour, huh? To have Grandma'am like you."

"An honour, indeed." You laughed. You let go of one of his hands, but kept hold of the other. You started to drag him with you towards your bedroom, but Coryo stayed put, confused. He’d never been inside your bedroom, he assumed it was off limits. You laughed at him, “I’m not trying to get you into bed, darlin’, if I was you’d know about it.”

His face turned a deep shade of red and you approached him and placed a gentle hand on his cheek. “Coryo, I’m messin’. I’m just going to pack a bag, you can come if you like, but if I’m making you uncomfortable you’re welcome to sit in the living room.”

“No. Oh, no. You’re not making me uncomfortable.” Coryo let you lead him to your bedroom, now, and he looked around the almost bare room as though it was a place of worship. There was hardly anything in there, a mattress on the floor, a small, oil lamp positioned next to it. A couple of books, a wardrobe which held your school uniform and your mother’s old performance dresses, which you wore every day you could. He was just happy to be somewhere so intimate, somewhere you allowed only the closest people in your life. “Sorry.”

You got that cheeky look on your face, now. The one that Coryo loved so much. “It’s okay. I know you’re a virgin, anyway-”

“Hey!” He smacked you with the blanket and you giggled and smacked him back. “That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, but it’s obvious.”

-

The walk to Coriolanus’ apartment wasn’t long, but it felt different. You’d never made it obvious that you were close, before, but you walked together, through the snow, chatting away like you’d been best friends for years - which was the case, and now people knew. Even when you passed classmates or their families, you’d both smile and wave, and it felt good to know that people would know.

“Are you excited to meet Grandma’am?” Coryo joked. Your cheeks balled when you laughed and gripped onto his hand in an overdramatic way. Coryo thought his heart might’ve burst.

You bounded forward, still holding his hand, and walked backwards in front of him. “Oh, the most excited. I’m sure she’s got great gossip.”

“Only the best. Did you know she had a fling with the President’s brother when they were in school?” Coryo whispered dramatically, and you gave him an equally as theatrical gasp.

“I hope she’ll tell me all about it.”

You arrived at the apartment cold but happy, noses bright red but laughing. Fingers freezing but locked together. You felt pure joy for the first time in a long time, and Coryo decided he could get used to this.

When Tigris opened the door, you knew this was the right decision. Her face lit up, and she clapped her hands together excitedly as soon as she saw you. She didn’t even bother to greet Coriolanus, just started straight for you, “Oh my! It’s so lovely to see you. Please tell me you’re staying for Christmas!”

“I sure am. Coryo managed to convince me.” You looked up to the boy stood beside you, who’d already been smiling down at you with such love in his eyes.

“Well, we are so happy to have you. Lucky to have you.” Tigris squeezed your shoulder and then stepped to the side, gesturing to both of you. “Come in, please.”

You could’ve sobbed, the feeling of being wanted, not being alone. Coryo touched a comforting hand to your arm as you stepped into the foyer, once grand, but now cracked and tired. Tigris took your coat, and the Grandma’am greeted you with open arms.

“Your dress is beautiful.” Tigris commented, and you did a quick twirl to show off the lace-up detail in the back.

“Thank you, it was my mama’s. I try to wear her dresses whenever I can.” You smoothed the ruffles of your dress, looking down lovingly at the shades of green tulle, handmade by your mother herself.

“And so you should.” Tigris reached out to touch your ruffles, too, and she smiled at you as she did so. “She had great taste.”

Coryo led you through to his bedroom, to let you drop your bag off and familiarise yourself with the place. “Thank you.” You muttered as you placed your bag on his windowsill. “For letting me come here, letting me stay. Your family are just beautiful.”

“Yeah, they’re great.” Coryo stood from his bed to join you as you looked out of his window onto the snow covered Corso, at a fresh snow angel and a family you could hear laughing from the penthouse. “I’m sure the Covey are, too. And your parents.”

“My parents were. And the Covey are. I hope one day, you can meet them.” You turned to him, that crease in your brow back.

“I’d love to.” Coryo took hold of your hand, noticing that you’d taken up an unsettled look. “Should we get some air? Grandma’am keeps roses on the roof, might be nice to see them in the snow.”

You nodded. “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

The roof was nice, you could see the entirety of the Capitol from up there - roofs engulfed in white, and the snow-covered roses were such a beautiful sight. You plucked one of the stems, after Coryo said you could, and simply stared at the thing. Back home, flowers were everywhere, they felt like warm hugs, like trips to the lake, like your mama. It was rare that you saw them growing in the Capitol.

“It’s beautiful up here.” You commented as you took a seat at the edge of the rooftop. “You can see the whole city.”

“It is beautiful.” Coryo sat next to you, shoulders touching, pinky fingers travelling closer to eachother and then pulling back, looking forward but watching eachother out of the corner of your eyes. “You’re beautiful.”

Coryo had let it slip, and he took in a deep breath and held it for a while after speaking. You tried not to let your smile get too wide, worried it would border on psychotic-looking if you let it reach it’s full potential. Beautiful, Coriolanus Snow called you beautiful.

“Oh.” Was all you could say, quietly, only loud enough to be picked up by the soft breeze and carried over to Coriolanus. “Thank you, Coryo. I think you’re beautiful.”

Coriolanus looked down and laughed, shaking his head at you. You let your pinkies intertwine, now. “You’re just saying that because I said it.”

“I mean it. Anyone would be stupid not to think it.” Then all of your fingers were locked together. And you sighed and let your head fall onto Coryo’s shoulder. He smiled to himself, and then, in a quick surge of confidence, he pressed a kiss to the top of your head and decided to speak his mind.

“You know I love you, right?" He blurted out. He didn’t regret it, but he was nervous, now. If he’d learned anything this Christmas Eve, it was that you made him nervous.

"I know." You closed your eyes and breathed in the cold air, “I love you, too."

"But I mean, really love you." Coryo took his hand from yours and, instead, draped his arm around your back, fingers reaching up to fidget with your hair. “You're very easy to fall in love with."

"Hm." You hummed and removed your head from his shoulder to look up at him. Your cheeks were flushed and your breath made little clouds in between your two faces. “I think you're very easy to fall in love with, too, Coryo."

You were so close, noses touching, Coryo’s hand still twirling one lock of your hair around and around. And then your lips were on his, his hand gripping the back of your neck, kissing you with a hunger, a passion, you’d never felt before. Not feverishly, not sexual in nature, just real, raw passion. You’d meant what you said. Coriolanus Snow was incredibly easy to love, and you did. You loved him. And he loved you. Nothing else had ever seemed to simple in your entire life.

Coryo couldn’t imagine a world, now, where your lips hadn’t been on his. Where you hadn’t called him beautiful. He was on a high, an all time high, he was convinced. Snow lands on top.

The snowflakes continued falling, landing on your heads, noses, the roses. And you let them, with no resentment, no upset. Because Coryo was there, everything was easy, now.

[starlightmeissa]

Love the new chapter! I really love all the dynamics, especially Jiraiya walking in and accidentally ruining his own dynamic with them. I really get the feeling that it never occurred to him that his students could *not* trust him. Like, I don't think it even occurred to him that his students wouldn't already respect him and be vying for his attention like he did in his old team. You mentioned him seeing Seiko as like Orochimaru due to the genius thing, and im just. So curious. Was he doing the immature equivalent thing of trying to one up a kid as an f u to his childhood rival? Does he want Seiko to like/respect him to feel vindicated? That's going to end interestingly. I wonder what it looks like from the outside, that his team watch their backs around him and eye him like he'll do something, and he thinks it's normal. Do they they think it's funny that a Sanin can't get a bunch of kids to like him? Are they concerned that there is no teacher student bonds forming like is traditional and expected? What does it mean in konoha society for a genin student to fundamentally not trust their teacher? For the entire team to stand with them and close ranks with their Sensei on the outside? Idk I feel like people are going to form Opinions about it

LONG WINDED RESPONSE! warning you all now! will contain spoilers related to my characterization of jiraiya!

I really get the feeling that it never occurred to him that his students could not trust him.

jiraiya doesn't really understand what position these kids are coming from, nor does he understand on any deeper level What It Means to be a jonin teacher. or a teacher worthy of trust in general. this isn't me bashing him, i think that while he CAN be a fun and engaging teacher, he doesn't really respect the impact he has on these kids' lives.

with his sensei he already respected him simply because he was the hokage. and, on top of that, hiruzen was an agreeable affable person. he commanded respect easily and his students trusted him not to lead them astray (at least while they were genin). jiraiya has taken this dynamic for granted and believes that to be the default. it is not.

as for the ame orphans, he was ALL THEY HAD. his mercy in choosing to teach them ingratiated them significantly more to him from the get go. this isn't the case for his genin team. his genin team just got some random guy who everyone says is strong, and now they're having to feel him out for if he's a good person and good teacher.

Was he doing the immature equivalent thing of trying to one up a kid as an f u to his childhood rival? Does he want Seiko to like/respect him to feel vindicated? That's going to end interestingly.

for jiraiya, i think what he did was totally normal and fine. yeah she's just a pipsqueak genin, but she's advanced for her age. she can handle a little spar.

in my head, jonin and chunin do use spars as a private space to check on each other, to check each other's loyalties too. shinobi are always more honest with a weapon in hand, the saying goes. so jiraiya just sees this as a opprotunity to privately ask if seiko knows what he and the hokage thinks she knows.

spoiler:

the hokage did not ask jiraiya to figure it out in the way jiraiya did. the hokage just mentioned that he suspected she knew, and that he wanted to know if she did or not. that sort of thing is important to accommodate for considering no one else in kushina's age group is aware of what she is. ill go over this in a later chapter, but there's your answer to if the hokage is trying to scare poor seiko half to death.

What does it mean in konoha society for a genin student to fundamentally not trust their teacher? For the entire team to stand with them and close ranks with their Sensei on the outside? Idk I feel like people are going to form Opinions about it

:)

ty for your ask!!

i love getting asks its like i got a little letter from a friend who lives far away and who's asking after me and my children's health. very very fun. lmk if you have any other ideas or thoughts about the kids! or of the side characters like the ino-shika-cho trio. im excited to write more of them.

[full-on-sam]

Hello, my name is Sam, (she/they) and this is my first WIP (I did write some short stories, and have a couple ideas for new WIPs). I will mainly post about it and/or writing tips, especially in regards to worlbuilding, maps, and character building. All asks welcome.

It is my first time on writeblr, and I'm excited to meet other writers.

Especially if you are very keen on character planning, but it's also nice if you don't like it!

I write mainly for middle schoolers/ high scoolers, and I made a point of writing what I would have wanted to read.

I started 5 years ago so I'm currently reworking my charachter a bit, especially my MC.

I like to write dystopian, a bit of horror, and also fantasy. Also LGBT/ Queer

A proper writeblr wip introduction is under the cut :)

NAME OF THE WIP: Causing an Apocalypse

WHAT IS IT: A trilogy, the titles are: Memory's Fire, From City to City, In Ruins.

GENRE: Dystopian and LGBTQ+

PLOT: The year is 2092. The main problem for humanity is currently finding a new source of energy, after everything else has failed. Thankfully the mysterious and rinomate school C.D.E.A. can provide to that. How? No one knows, except the children who are admitted. They are all between 6 and 12 years of age, and they must maintain the silence.

Poor Liam however could not care less about energy sources. His main preoccupation are instead the strange dreams he keeps having. They revolve around a house fire and a little girl he knows nothing about (even if he has the sensation he really should).

Moreover, one day, he discovers that the C.D.E.A is not a prized school as everyone believed it to be. And he slowly understands that there is a connection between the little girl and the C.D.E.A. institute. But what could it be? What does C.D.E.A mean? Who is the girl he keeps dreaming so often? He has the sensation he should know all the answers, but he does not remember a single one of them.

His only option is to search for the central building of C.D.E.A. and hope to find the information he needs.

What started as a simple research, will however turn into a much more difficult quest. Liam will have to save the future, while trying to remember his past. Thankfully he will have some precious help by people who, just like him, are looking for answers around the mysterious C.D.E.A.

MAIN CHARACHTERS:

Liam Wordsworth (he/him): a young 16 year old boy who suddenly has more to worry about than the math test he could have failed. His main goal? Look for a girl he feels strongly attached to (even if he does not know why). What will that imply? A travel across the USA, Europe and New Africa. And discoveries he would have rather not made. He tends to get angry often, and he has lost all his memories in a house fire. He is an orphan and got adopted by Clem, and elderly lady, albeit still very energetic. He will be the leader of te Sibling Squad. He is trans AFAB, this has not a big impact on the story but it is mentioned.

Kyle West (he/him): a bisexual young lad from Canada who is looking for his brother. When he does not call him back after being offered a work opportunity as C.D.E.A., he knows something is wrong. He will embark in a travel looking for him, and will meet Liam and the Squad in the process. He is ADHD, fidgets a lot. He will grow feelings for Joshua.

Helen Marquez(she/her): her nickname? Bonebreaker. She is a fierce teenager who would never pass up an opportunity for a fight. Her parents are divorcedand her little brother, Diego, is currently lost. She knows he can't be dead tough. She saw him on a C.D.E.A. minivan. And she does not think twice before following that van in order to discover what C.D.E.A. is and where are they bringing her brother. Her father is Mexican, and Mexico is where her Abuela lives. She should have been called Elena but her mother changed the name later. That was the first fight her parents had. After the divorce her mother started taking drugs, and she had to take care of Diego a lot growing up.

Nia Otieno (she/her): she is a shy 13 years old black girl, and she does not know anything about her parents. Her mother died while giving birth, and her father disappeared leaving only an address behind. She will be very surprised when that address will lead her right into C.D.E.A. main building. Why is she there? Who is her father? She does not know how to swim. She will be like a sister for all the others in the Squad.

Yossel Siegel (he/they): he is gay, nonbinary, and jew. He was born in Egypt, 7 years after his brother Isaac. Theyr parents were Jew and could speak Yiddish and Arabic. His father was from the USA, his mom from Egypt. When his mom died theur father returned to USA. At home they spoke primarily Arab and Yiddish, but at school he learned English. He struggled less then his brother because he moved at 2, while Isaac was already 9 and struggled more with learning a language. Their life is not easy at all, especially because his brother will have him steal in order to support his family. After moving his father struggled finding a job and they are extremely poor. One day, however, he will return home to find absolutely nothing and no one. The only trace left are some tire prints. Following them he will see his brother making a deal with a man who claims to be a C.D.E.A. operative. They will have no choice but follow them remaining hidden. At least until he meets the Squad. He is quite religious, and likes dressing in colorful ways. They will develop strong feelings for Kyle.

Simon Csizmadia (he/him): pale, frecklish and asthmatic, he is the nerd of the Sibling Squad. His father is Hungarian, his mother is Russian, but born in Hungary. The Squad will all end up in his motel, and once he will reveal he knows something about C.D.E.A. he will be immediately recruited. He hopes to find his little sister, Anya, who got recruited years before. He has a feeling something bad happened to her tough. He is a real computer nerd, and that will come in handy when the Squad will need a hacker.

Kora Leeland (she/they): she could not care less about her gender. She is 22 and in a stable relationship with Jack. They are disabled and with limited mobility: she often uses crutches or a wheelchair. That does not stop her from being an excellent strategist. She and Jack know what C.D.E.A. really does to children and her goal is to stop them. They and Jack have been boycotting them for a few years, with scarce results. But thanks to the Sibling Squad everything could change.

Jack, short for Jacqueline, Hamilton (she/her but does not really care): she is 23, and she is ready to sacrifice everything to fight C.D.E.A. she works as an operative, but really that is just a cover in order to get better information and help Kora out. She can drive almost everything. She is often exchanged for a male, but she is actually Kora's long term gf.

Lucas West (he/him): Kyle's brother. Will he be really working for C.D.E.A

Isaac Siegel (he/him): Yossel's brother. He is Jew. He would do anything to get his family money to survive. Included siding with the bad guys. Will Yossel be able to change his mind?

Kate Wordsworth (she/her): Liam's little sister. They got separated but she never stopped hoping to see him again. Will her dreams come true?

Diego Marquez (he/him): Helen's little brother. He aspires to be as strong as his sister, but for now he is just really good at drawing. Will he make it out of that van safe and sound?

Anya Novikov/Csizmadia (she/her): she is Russian, and she is Simon's adopted sister. She did not correctly develop her vocal chords while in the womb, and as a result she remained mute since birth.

Jennifer Leeland(she/her): Kora's little sister. Kora knows what happened to her, but that only gives her strength to keep fighting C.D.E.A.

Kabir Hassam and Javier Parra: Liam's school friends. They will help him even from afar. Up until C.D.E.A. will try and recruit them. What will their answer be? Karim is Nigerian, and Javier Argentinia.

Yohannes Otieno (he/him): He is C.D.E.A's leader. All other informations are top secret.

CURRENT WIP PROGRESS: planned all three books in general, planned the first half of the first book in detail, wrote the first 4 chapters (out of maybe 40 🥲)

That's all. I know it is a long post lol, so thank you if you made it to the end and it's ok if you did not follow everything.

Everything about this WIP will be tagged #CAA or #Causing an Apocalipse

[spideywhites]

🥑🍇🥦🍏🍐🌶️🍒 for natsu of course 😈

🥑 [ What will they never back down about, even if it makes them seem bad? ]

Children should be allowed to be children, and the responsibility of the world must be the responsibility of adults. That’s a morality issue that’s easy enough to understand in our world, but not in the shinobi one. Natsume is very bitter about his stolen childhood and thinks that Konoha is in the wrong for having children graduate at 12 years old or earlier. He’s also not quiet about these feelings, which absolutely puts him on Konoha’s shit-list. They want to have their canon fodder children in peace >:/

🍇 [ What’s their circle of people/their species like? What dynamic would they be called? ]

Uhh, this is an odd question but I think I get what it’s asking. His current circle of people/friends isn’t a dynamic I would call happy. It now consists solely of Naruto, Sasuke, Hinata, and Genma. It’s more of a dysfunctional family unit, where the relationship isn’t equal. Natsume gives far more than he takes, and for all that the Terrible Trio are just kids and try their best to be good to Natsume, he’s still the one with all the responsibility. Meanwhile Genma is trying like hell to fix this broken little kid that he’s not allowed to care for in the eyes of Konoha.

🥦 [ What do they hate about humanity/their species? ]

The propensity for hatred, fear, and ignoring problems. Basically, he hates that humans mostly suck and are only looking out for themselves. But he’s equally as guilty because he’s decided that he understands the way the world works and will do whatever it takes to rise above everyone else.

🍏 [ How do they differ from the norm and how are they punished for it? ]

Natsume, being a vague SI/OC character with loose memories of a different existence, is already different. He feels awkward about certain social norms, shinobi or not, already has an understanding of morality that he can’t seem to forget—and that conflicts heavily with the morals and lifestyle Konoha attempts to brainwash their people into following. I would say he’s punished not only by feeling even more like an outsider than he already is (as a Jinchuuriki and an Uzumaki) but also by all those in power who don’t respect or understand his opinions and think he needs to be controlled.

🍐 [ What is their current social standing? If they could change it, would they, and to what? ]

Very poor orphan. Natsume would absolutely want to be rich so he could take Naruto (and Sasuke, he supposes) and move very far away.

🌶️ [ Who would your OC declare their sworn enemy if they could meet them? ]

Um. Probably Minato at this point in time. He doesn’t even know the guy’s his dad, either. (Awkward.) He just knows that the Yondaime ruined his and Naruto’s lives. Eventually, the answer will likely be Danzo.

🍒 [ Who is your OC’s perfect companion? ]

Now that would be cheating if I told you, wouldn’t it?

[ive-opened-throats]

I need to start being insane (vent sorryyy!)

Idk man I think my brain turned ‘everyone has faced different things and there are nuances to everyones lives and you may not be able to 100% understand a person via empathy but you can still be their friend’ into like. Some horrible strange bastardization of care. I dont know if I actually care about people beyond the lens of myself? What if my fear of hurting people is the only thing making me try at all. Even then, it comes out all wrong. I’ve always had a weird savior mentality bc I was so lucky, so lucky to be loved and pretty and smart, so I was like. Okay everyone else are poor orphan children and the pull i feel between my heart and theirs is because i need to be their friend and help them somehow otherwise what use am I. I have to make it all count. I wasnt killed or beaten and I was lucky that I was only raped sweetly and abused by pretty girls and not horrible old men like the ones in the movies. I was lucky to have been taught politeness and grace and compassion. I’m a goddamn Disney Princess. I turned myself into this unfallible little angel gracing the masses with her presence and picking up the nearest tiny sad eyed queer and ripping them to shreds with a big smile on her face, all blonde and blue eyed, leaving them this heap of raw and twitching flesh. And she’d cry and cry that she’d broken another toy! And it was fine to her because the alternative was to lean in and whisper, with her hands cupped around her lips, “There is something horrible inside me. Its horrible horrible horrible and if I let it out it may be the death of you and I. And I’m afraid that if it leaves me, it will look just like you.”

[anonanimal]

witch from mercury thoughts ep 13 & 14

new opening and ending are so good. new opening wasn't very gay but the ending has the kiss fake-out and the very deliberate hand-holding. the way they slowly curl their fingers at the same time is interesting hmmm

delling in a coma...miorine held for questioning...miorine alone with prospera... i don't like that shit at all STAY AWAY FROM HER

suletta trying to comfort lilique by saying she and aerial will protect her, and her trying to give nika the "advice" of move forward, gain two were creepy as fuck, suletta baby i need you to get a grip

i think suletta challenged them to a duel because she thinks that's how things work, because she's that naive, and it's lucky for her and nika that that was exactly the right thing to say to sophie

norea and el5n's eyes being the exact same light green color, and that little comment he made about her eyes reminding him of someone else (el4n i assumed) makes me wonder.....

the way sophie recited miorine's info, seems like it was something she'd memorized for the mission

aERIal REAL!!!!!! and even though it was implied from the start, prospera revealing it was still pretty horrible. illustrated by belmeria trying not to throw up. sophie's death was horrible. everything is so horrible oh god. so. i guess sophie calling suletta big sister wasn't totally wrong, just that suletta's actually the little sister

so earth just has a surplus of orphans to do whatever with, huh. slaves, terrorists, surgically altered spies, you name it

i'm sure what shaddiq has told norea and sophie their mission is and what shaddiq is actually trying to accomplish are not the same. he wanted them to show up at the school partly to keep suspicion off of him and make all this look like terrorist attacks totally not orchestrated by spacians

these children taking over their parents' companies...lauda and miorine > the roy children. since they're minor children i expect there to be real adults running the show even if they're nominally ceos by weird space company law, would love to see this. i mean we know children really can have companies in their own names, albeit with adult help, probably more than they realized (gund-arm inc), because for the elites everything is a game, but even so, surely companies like those in the benerit group are too important to let children do ceo things

soo extremely fucked and chilling, the shot of benerit group ships heading to earth to start their war on terror

i need the earth house kids to get out of this alive please sunrise please i'll never ask for anything again. martin turned nika in right? that's why he was standing with his back against the wall clutching his phone? they would have shown up anyway to question everyone in earth house but the way they ask for nika...martin turned her in. and he doesn't know the details of everything so i'm sure he thinks the destruction caused by sophie and norea could have been prevented if he'd turned nika in before. poor martin :(

people repeatedly projecting onto suletta and being disappointed is so sad. 3lan thinks she might be an enhanced human like him, nika thinks she might be an orphan like her, sophie thinks suletta is the thrill she's been looking for. does miorine ever project her desires onto suletta? i think there have been times she wants to but she's too cynical and suspicious to let that part of her win. basically mirroring anthy and utena

i love/hate this classic gundam plot of "protagonists fighting for their lives on the wrong side of history" always a bad time

^love that this person made this connection with suletta calling her mother a magician

since aERIal is confirmed we have to start speculating again about where suletta came from. i'm betting cloned from ericht. i'm supposing right now that ericht died from effects of interfacing with the gundam very soon after the incident. so if the incident was 21 years ago, and suletta is 17, it took about four years for the successful ericht clone to be "born." can you imagine doing science experiments on the remains of your young child for four years. no wonder elnora is so fucked up

[allmightluver]

**bnha spoilers** I'm just sat here with renewed realisation of what All Might is going through. 40 years. /40 years/ he held and refined that power and dedicated his every waking (and sleeping if Vigilantes is anything to go by) moment towards the goal of defeating AfO and creating a society in which people could feel happy and safe. And now as it turns out AfO is still alive, society is broken and he has given a literal piece of his soul to this young boy leaving himself with only phantoms

Yes. I don’t think people quite grasp what all he’s going through.

It’s been shown recently to us that some, if not most, heroes have underlying ambitions in becoming a hero. Whether for money, glory, fame, popularity, doesn’t matter. They’re ultimately in it for themselves. Toshinori’s intentions from the beginning have been the most pure- he wanted to be a symbol that people can look to and know things will be ok. A symbol of hope. This boy was only around 14 years old when he decided this. What kind of 14 year old sees the world that clearly? Sees that people have no hope, that a veil of darkness covers them. The only thing I can think of is- Toshinori did not have a good childhood. Something had to have happened to a boy that young to stop seeing the joy in life so early, and see the world’s flaws. Truthfully, I believe he was an outcast- due to his quirklessness. Most likely an orphan, perhaps abandoned by his parents, as we’ve never seen him have any family. I do truly believe Toshinori has been alone all his life. I don’t doubt more could have happened to him as a child before he met Nana. 

Some may argue that Izuku is the same age, and therefore it shouldn’t be that hard to see why Toshinori wanted to be a hero at such a young age. BUT, Izuku had someone to look up to, ever since he was a child of four years old, to inspire him to be a hero his whole life *cough cough* All Might. Izuku also was quirkless, much like Toshinori, and an outcast because of it (hence where I assume Toshinori was much the same). But ultimately, Izuku wanted to save people because he saw his hero do it. It really wasn’t until Izuku was a bit older, has been in UA, has been on rescue missions, has seen what the heroes see, that I think he’s truly realized how dark the world really is. Toshinori didn’t have that. He didn’t have someone to inspire him as a child, someone to look up to, a hero to inspire him to help others. At that time, heroes hadn’t become as popular as they are in present times. Toshinori saw the world for what it was, on his own, at a tender age. I think that day Nana ran into this blonde hair kid, she eyed him up, noticed his scraggly form, looked into those captivating blue eyes, and saw a man who’s lived through the world’s horrors- experienced the worst it has to offer-, and wants to save everyone he can from the same fate, all in a 14 year old boy. 

Then after only a few short years with the woman he saw as his mother, she’s killed in front of him because of his own weakness- he wasn’t strong enough yet to protect her. The only other person his life, Gran Torino, literally abused him. He beat him to a pulp, taking his own emotions out on a teenager, and I doubt Toshinori said anything of it. He probably thought he deserved it. He’s still afraid of Gran Torino to this day, remembering the beatings and expecting more for his failures- even if he doesn’t know what they are surely he’s at fault for something, but he’s the only person who’s stood by his side for this long. Even while at a distance, and spouting nothing but criticisms along the way. But Toshinori had to put aside his own emotions to be that hope for everyone. He left everything he knew to go to a new country on his own, to learn how to be a hero, to be that hope for someone.

Vigilantes showed us just how hard he worked. Toshinori literally stayed awake with no sleep for days on end- 3 in the chapter I’m referencing- because people needed help, people needed saving, and no one else stepped up. He fought villains, rescued civilians, repaired damage, cleared rubble, (even accept and eat food that was against his dietary restrictions after his injury) whatever the public needed, all while draining himself further. He worked himself to the point of exhaustion because he had no help, once literally falling asleep while mid-leap across the city because he simply could go no further. 

^^These happen in succession of each other^^

No one stepped up to say “Hey, Mr. Number 1, you’ve been working hard lately. Let me help you!” No one tried to take over his position. Even the Number 2 hero, Endeavor, never tried to take some of his burden. His only goal was to try to be better than All Might in terms of power- he was never trying to be the hero that the people relied on All Might for. Everyone relied on him when things looked grim. He was the back up plan. And all of this happened before Toshinori’s injury. 

The only thing he ever wanted to do- help people- he can’t do (at least the way he’s always known how to). The ability to save people has been taken from him in the most gruesome way. He was finally able to fight the man that killed Nana, and in a rage that I’m sure echoed with all of the emotions of the previous users, he smashed that man’s head like a grape. But not without consequence. Several organs are gone. The pain is excruciating. He wears that man’s mark on his body for the rest of his life, never truly able to rid himself of the filth.

Then we have Nighteye’s betrayal. The man that helped him as a sidekick, the man that grew to be his only friend. Now some people may ask why Toshinori flipped like he did to Nighteye looking into his future when he was concerned about him making it through his injury. What I believe is Toshinori didn’t want to know when he would die (and really, who does). Now he knows he’s on a time limit, knows the clock is ticking. Time is running out to keep the world at peace, and with him as he is now, how long can this go on? 

I think the betrayal, doing something that Toshinori specifically asked him not to do, is what hurt the most. How can he trust Nighteye anymore? He already can only count on one hand the people he can trust, let alone befriend.

He’s wasted away into a skeleton, a shell of the man he used to be. He can’t over exert himself without his only lung bleeding in protest. It’s canon in the side books that he really doesn’t eat much, which isn’t good for his diet without a stomach now (he’s supposed to have several small meals a day). He is quite literally punishing himself by starving. (Granted, he doesn’t feel hunger anymore.) He’s a sick man, beyond medical help at this point. They can only stabilize him and hope for the best. For five years now he’s in constant pain, every day. He loses blood like sweat. Surely his veins are bruised and collapsed with how many times he would have needed to be hospitalized. Whether from losing too much blood, being too dehydrated or starved from “forgetting” to eat, or an organ failing as body continues to fall apart. “...even as my body rots and grows frail...” - Toshinori People are bound to stare at him as he walks down the street. A tall, willowy, skeleton with a grimace on his face and blood stains on his clothes as he coughs up more into his own hands. There would be the ones who outright ignore him when they walk by, the people who offer pitying smiles and sympathetic glances or just outright stare, and then ones who are afraid of his appearance- children screaming at the mere sight of him and running to their parents to hide from the monster. Each one is another knife in Toshinori’s side, an ache in his chest. If only they knew who I really am.

Losing Nighteye took a toll on his hero work as well. Mirai was a huge help in the past, and took care of all Toshinori’s paperwork, while also reminding him to take care of himself. Without him, Toshinori was even more buried beneath his responsibilities. Plus, now he was on a time limit. He even snapped briefly in his first meeting with Tsukauchi, accidentally revealing himself as All Might because he was under too much pressure, and telling the detective he literally couldn’t handle doing everything by himself (who graciously took over the paperwork side of things for him). 

He was living a double life now, having to lie to people left and right about who he was while in his small form, about how he became so sickly, why he was here in the first place who the heck is this skinny old guy. Surely he had multiple visits to the doctor while continuing to repair the damage done by AFO (there’s a limit to how much the body can handle at once. And things I’m sure continued to fail as time went on). Then he would be bedridden for as long as the doctors could keep him strapped to a bed, until he couldn’t take the people’s cries for help any longer, and would jump into action. (It’s also revealed he has something of a super hearing- able to hear danger- which may have been a form of danger sense of OFA that was never fully unlocked?. Either way, he surly could sense disasters happening while he could only lay and heal from his latest surgery. Those poor doctors must have had to re-stitch him several times). People blame him for not preparing society for his retirement, that he failed in passing on the torch so to speak, but in reality he did everything possible to keep society from falling for 40 years, doing all within his power just to keep things afloat. He is only one person. One human being, he can’t do everything despite trying to. Society failed All Might.

People blame him for not being a good teacher. He didn’t exactly have the greatest teacher himself to learn from. He’s never had to teach anyone anything, he just punches! He’s learning. And for his own credit, he’s an incredibly wise man, he has years of experience under his belt, and an intelligence score of 6/6, scoring up there with Nezu! He may not always have the right way to bring something up, but he’s doing his best. Yet even he blames himself for Izuku not being able to control his quirk better. Every time the boy hurts himself, it’s just another tally on the chalkboard of Toshinori’s failures. He himself knows the boy deserves better, better than him. Useless. Pathetic.

Then his friend from America, Dave, essentially became a villain trying to preserve Toshinori’s legacy after Toshinori told him about his injury. Dave went behind his back, threatened people, injured people (pretty sure people died), all for Toshinori’s sake. Something he didn’t want to begin with. Having to put your only other friend in jail for trying to help you surely couldn’t have been easy.

Oh, by the way? All For One isn’t dead. All Might will fight him again, publicly, have his weakened form exposed to the world, and have his own emotions toyed with as he finds out about his master’s grandson in the villain’s hands. Would Nana hate him for leaving her son alone like she’d asked, and dooming her grandchild to be raised by the greatest villain? Could he have done anything to save him? But Toshinori isn’t allowed to feel, he has to smile and push his own feelings aside once again, because there’s a villain to be fought, and only he can fight him. Despite coming out on top, he’ll have suffered severe head trauma, broken left arm, destroyed right arm, and several cuts and bruises that are sure to scar. And then, his quirk, the only thing that’s been allowing him to help people, the gift given to him that he carefully held for 40 years and molded into his own until his very consciousness was permanently carved into it, blows out like a match in the wind. And he’s done. Used up. Empty. Broken. Hollow. Alone, again.

He overhears his student, Bakugo, admit that he blames himself for All Might’s retirement. If he hadn’t been captured, All Might wouldn’t have had to save him, and he wouldn’t have had to fight AFO. Of course Toshinori knows that’s not true, his time was about to run out anyway. It would have happened one way or another. But how can he explain to this child that he wasn’t the cause of his hero, the world’s greatest hero, fighting for his sake, bleeding for his sake, being forced into retirement to keep him safe. Every time Bakugo sees the bandages covering Toshinori’s body is another reminder of the pain and sacrifice Toshinori willingly gave to keep him safe. Toshinori wasn’t held when his mentor died. He wasn’t told it was ok to be sad, that grief and mourning was a natural process, that it takes time to heal. He wasn’t told it was ok to cry. Instead his feelings were beaten out of him as he wondered if Gran Torino blamed him for Nana’s death. He already blamed himself How then, does he comfort a child mourning for him? For what he lost.

And then he gets the call to come to the hospital. Mirai, Nighteye, his old sidekick friend, has been gravely injured, much like he himself was only a few years ago, and most likely won’t survive the night. And to his horror, Nighteye is happy to see him, smiles at him, says he doesn’t hate him for what happened, only wants Toshinori to be happy. He can’t accept that, at least let him apologize, reconcile his sins before it’s too late! But it is. Another fractured piece of his heart gone.

Of course, seeing your students beat up and their arms completely destroyed must have hurt. Instead of being able to save these kids, they’re the ones that hurt themselves to save everyone else. And if Bakugo had kept OFA, things could have been very different (especially with what we know now of OFA and people with quirks). Toshinori wasn’t mad at Izuku for transferring it away, he’d never regret choosing Izuku, and I believe he still would have stayed by Izuku and Bakugo’s side should it have stayed in Bakugo, doing whatever he could to help.

As he tells Aizawa, “I’ve decided to live,” -that statement seems so melancholy, besides obvious reasons. It sounds more like another task he has to accomplish. He didn’t die he was supposed to die with the AFO fight, and now the whole life he lived is over. The world has no use for him anymore. If not for Izuku, he’d have nothing left keeping him here. But because his boy made him promise to live, he’ll do so. Though it almost seems like he says those words with regret. “I’ve decided to live.” Not, “I’m going to live!” “Nothing can kill me!” “I won’t go down without a fight!” No. “I’ll live if I have to, only because you asked me to.” The man is obviously and outwardly depressed. He has so many things against him. No doubt has severe PTSD, anxiety, among others. Not to mention his own physical health. Every day hurts. It’s painful to be alive. Why would he torture himself if he doesn’t have to? For you, my boy. You’re the only thing keeping me here. The only light in my dark world.

He tries to help Izuku find out the previous holder’s quirks, to help his boy in any way he can now that he’s worthless, and goes days on end without sleep, running his body into the ground. He even forgets Christmas. Only to find that by giving the boy the same gift he had received, he may have just doomed him to an early death, among psychological torture (danger detection). (Granted, he really doesn’t know how everything works, and he’s afraid to talk to anyone about it). His boy could live only half a life.

It’s only been a few months since he retired, and society has fallen into shambles. People are blaming him. People are dying. He watches helplessly as his colleague fight his fight for him, and end up battered, bruised, crippled, dead. He students, his boy, battle the monster he should have killed. Children are bleeding. This shouldn’t happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Is everything he worked for, everything he fought to protect, to build up, to inspire, is all for naught?! Did he live a foolish dream and doom the world? Was all the the friends he lost, tears he shed, the organs he destroyed, the pain he endures on a daily basis from the hole in his side, and the blood he continues to bleed every day, for nothing? The public, the ones he protected for so long, mourn his absence, but surely there are those among them who also blame him. The statue from his last fight in Kamino one that he never asked for was decimated in a mock of his catch phrase- the one that was supposed to give hope.

Now he can feel his own vestige speaking with Izuku in the OFA realm, even with out OFA in his own body anymore. His clock as nearly reached it’s limit, Nighteye’s prediction is due any day now. The only thing he wants is to see his boy smile at him, to give him some shred of hope. Yet the child remains unconscious, and Toshinori can’t even hold his hand from the bandages covering his arms. Will he still be able to fight? Is there any coming back from this now? Did I break him?

With all Toshinori has been through, I’m honestly surprised we haven’t seen him just outright break down. Anyone, anyone, else should have crumbled under the pressure of holding up the world for 40 years alone. And instead of being able to pass it on to someone when he can no longer bear its weight, it simply falls to into the abyss. People don’t credit All Might enough for everything he’s done. Most don’t realize the sacrifices he’s made. His character is so unbelievably profound and deep, it’s more than just the “I am here!” people focus on. He’s a deeply troubled, layered, complex character. And I can’t find fault within him.

[ragingbookdragon]

I Saw It Coming When You Threw The First Punch

Batmom x Batfamily One-Shot

Word Count: 1.7K Warnings: Explicit Language, Mentions of Violence

Author's Note: I honestly feel like I get my irritation from people out by writing stories where the characters punch people. I live vicariously through my characters. Enjoy! -Thorne

Getting the call that his wife had been taken into GCPD custody was not one that Bruce had ever expected to receive. Not in a million years. And yet, low and behold, Gordon had called sounding apologetic that she’d been detained after a physical altercation at the gala she’d hosted earlier that evening.

Which was absolutely baffling to him, because the only person more anal retentive about screwing up at a gala than Alfred, was his wife. So, something must’ve seriously set her off if she’d hauled off on somebody. And Gordon had made it quite clear that it was his wife that threw the first punch, though beyond that, he didn’t know what else had occurred because she’d invoked her rights to the company lawyer and to remain silent, simply staring at the wall while the other officers tried to get a story out of her—Bruce knew she wouldn’t crack. Other than him, his wife had a reserve that no man, alien, or god could break. He’d never say it, but he was envious of his wife’s willpower.

He arrived rather quickly with all four sons in tow, knowing that the sight of the entire family would probably help her chances of getting out and they waited patiently to be escorted to where she was being held.

When they arrived at the interrogation room, they saw her sitting there with crossed legs, hands placed palm down on the table. Her eyes were closed in what Bruce recognized as her deep meditative state; the one she used to fight off telepathic control from enemies—she was probably recounting what happened that night.

“What are the charges?” he asked Gordon and the older man sighed.

“Simple battery and public disturbance.”

Bruce hummed lowly in his throat and gazed at his wife. “How do you see this playing out for her?”

“If the woman she keelhauled doesn’t press charges, there’s possibility of probation with community service.”

He had to play naïve. “And if she does?”

Gordon met his gaze. “Then you’re looking at your wife going into lockup for a year.”

Bruce let out a sigh. “I’ll call our lawyer then.”

“I’ll give you and your wife some privacy,” he replied, hitting a button on the keypad beside the door, and the glass went dark while the glowing red button recording the room turned off.

“Thank you, Gordon,” he said, and the detective waved as he walked off, closing the door to the interrogation room behind him. Bruce looked at his sons. “Let’s go see what set your mom off tonight.”

***

The door to the room opened but she didn’t open her eyes, still under the cold water in her retreat.

“(Y/N),” someone murmured and though the voice was familiar, she didn’t come to yet.

“(Y/N),” they repeated a bit firmer. “Come back up.”

Ever so slowly, she allowed her mind to come back from the deep waters and she opened her eyes, smiling at her husband and sons.

“Good evening family.” Damian immediately sprinted to her and buried his face in her neck, and she laughed, running a hand through his short dark hair. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“You are in trouble,” he murmured and pulled away to look into her eyes. “We will do whatever you need, Umi.”

(Y/N) snorted. “Don’t worry about me baby. Knowing Little Miss Martha May, she’s not going to press charges over our spat.”

“I think simple battery is bit more than a spat, mom,” Dick worried, brows furrowing in concern. “What did you two even start fighting about?”

Her eyes darted to the glass then to Bruce and he said, “Gordon turned off the cameras.”

“Mom,” Tim started, and she looked at him; he held up his phone screen. “I just assured that you’re protected here.”

She nodded and let out a sigh. “I knew I should’ve just walked away but I couldn’t help it. She just set me off like a match to gunpowder.”

“What’d you guys even duke it out over,” Jason questioned, and she sighed again, recounting the night.

***

“You’ve thrown another wonderful party, Miss Wayne,” Lucius murmured, handing her a champagne glass.

She grinned widely, thanking him. “Thank you, Lucius, I try.”

“Clan couldn’t come tonight?”

“You’ve always been perceptive about us, haven’t you?”

“To use your words, I try,” he laughed, and she nodded.

“Patrol started early tonight,” she said inconspicuously, eyes shifting around to glance at who was walking near them. “Besides, most of them only come to these to appease the crowd.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot that you’re the only one who actually enjoys these.”

“Only when Bruce and the kids are here,” she corrected. “It’s easier to bullshit when they’re here to pick up the slack.”

He barked a laugh and she chuckled in return when someone walked up to them. She turned and immediately grimaced at the old classmate of hers.

“(Y/N), such a beautiful party you’ve thrown tonight,” the woman greeted, though it was laced with cheerful fakeness.

She plastered a smile on her face. “Good evening, Marianne. I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

“Oh, you know me, I’m always up for a party.” Her eyes drifted around. “Where is your husband? I wanted to thank him for the gift basket he sent after my operation.” Marianne gave her a sarcastic smile. “Isn’t it rather off for a host to avoid his own party?”

Note to self, yell at Bruce for sending her a gift.

“He had to work late tonight. So did the boys.” (Y/N) matched her smile. “I’m sure they’d be delighted to know that you thought of them though.”

Something shifted in Marianne’s eyes. “Oh yes, the children you have.” She leaned in close and murmured, “You know I’ve been hearing some rather negative rumors about yours and Bruce’s decision to adopt orphans rather than have some of your own.”

(Y/N) blinked, not sure if she should be shocked or unimpressed. “Really? Care to enlighten me?”

Marianne waved a hand. “The major one is that you simply took pity on the strays because you were barren.” She felt like she’d been slapped across the face and her jaw dropped as she gaped at the woman.

Apparently, that was all the ammunition that Marianne needed because she offered a sympathetic smile an placed a hand on (Y/N)’s arm. “Oh, you poor dear.” She patted her arm again. “You should’ve come to me instead of adopting orphans. I would’ve been happy to be a surrogate for you.”

(Y/N) shrugged the hand off her arm and reached up, pulling the silver teardrop earrings from her ears. “Yeah, those orphans aren’t mine, not biologically.”

She pulled off her diamond wedding rings and handed them and the earrings over to Lucius who took them and stepped back.

“But you know what they are?” she glowered at Marianne and seethed, “They’re my sons.”

The next thing anyone knew, the two women were rolling on the floor, their hostess throwing punches that seemed to make everyone wince when they connected to the woman’s face.

***

“And all I remember was being escorted down here,” she finalized, eyes drifting to Bruce’s.

He simply stared at her for a moment before he let out a heavy sigh and put his face in his hands. “I’m proud that you defended our family, but at the same time, I’m disappointed that you let Marianne set you off.”

(Y/N) crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, so you’re taking her side?”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Bruce shot back. “If she decides to press charges, you’re going to be in lockup for a year.”

“She’s not.”

“You don’t know that, (Y/N).”

“No, I do,” she blinked and leaned forward. “If Marianne doesn’t want me to ruin her image with shit she did when she was a teenager, she’ll keep her mouth shut and take the blame for this.”

“What’d she do, Ma?” Jason questioned curiously and she turned her attention to him.

“Enough that’ll disgrace her image amongst every elite this side of the globe if she tries me anymore.”

Before anyone could say anything, the door opened and they turned, seeing Gordon walking in. “Good evening, Miss Wayne,” he greeted, and she smiled.

“Good evening, Jim. How’s your night so far?”

He chuckled. “Not too bad. I got to detain my favorite socialite and listen to all my officers speculate what she did.”

(Y/N) lifted her hands palm up beside her shoulders. “I live to please, Jim, you know that.”

“I do.” He walked over and handed her a few papers. “When asked if she wanted to press charges, Marianne Walters declined. She instead gave a rather detailed statement that she instigated the fight and threw the first punch.” He stared at the busted lip she had. “Does that match what happened?”

She quickly looked over the papers and nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”

Gordon sighed. “Do you wish to press charges?”

(Y/N) shook her head. “No,” she smiled. “There’s no reason to make a fuss about this.”

“…Miss Wayne, you and Miss Walters are all over the news.”

She shrugged. “And people have very short memories. They’ll forget about this.” She handed back the papers. “Send this to my lawyer and she’ll handle it with the prosecutors.”

“You think they won’t press charges despite Walters?” Gordon asked and she nodded.

“Oh, they won’t,” she said then looked at the clock. “Am I free to leave? It’s been a long night.”

Gordon let out a heavy sigh and nodded. “Yes Miss Wayne, you’re free to leave now.”

(Y/N) rose. “Wonderful.” She looked at her sons. “Boys, let’s go.”

They followed her and Bruce stood from the table, standing beside Gordon. “Thank you, Jim.”

Gordon grunted. “I know (Y/N) threw the first punch.”

“You do?”

“Of course, I do.” He huffed. “And I don’t blame her either.” He watched (Y/N) laugh at something Dick said while the others groaned around him. “You’ve got a good woman, Bruce. Good wife. Even better mother.”

Bruce looked at his wife and let an easy smile cross his lips as she pulled them all into hugs. “Yeah…yeah, I do, don’t I.”

[minty-mumbles]

Foundlings

Summary: What if the Links weren't born? What if they just... appeared one day?

Author's Note: This was inspired by some asks on @tortilla-of-courage's blog

(Read it on Ao3 Here)

~~~

Everyone on Skyloft had a profound bond with their loftwing. Everyone. They would trust their birds with their life, and more significantly, the lives of their children, if they had any. It wasn’t a rare sight to see your neighbor’s loftwing watching after their child, or to see a loftwing carrying a wayward child back home.

And, although Skyloft is a small island, not everyone knows each other.

So they can’t be blamed, really, that they didn't notice right away that all the loftwings on the island were playing hot potato with a small child.

They only really started to notice when the headmaster of the Knight’s academy found his loftwing looking after not just his own daughter, but a young boy as well.

Before he could question it, or pick up the boy, another loftwing swooped in, snatching the boy up by the back of his tunic. The toddler didn’t seem to mind, squealing in excitement as the bird took him up to the roof.

Gaepora still might not have thought anything about it, except that he knew for a fact that that loftwing’s rider had died a year ago. That’s why the bird was here. It was still mourning its partner, and it was better for it to be around other loftwings. The communal nests for the loftwings at the academy were perfect for that.

And, as far as he knew, the loftwing hadn’t picked a new rider. So whose child was that?

~

After a good two or three weeks of searching for the child’s parents and simultaneously trying to get the boy away from the loftwings, they were still empty-handed.

The search for the parents was futile. Nearly everyone on the island knew about the boy now, and most had even seen their own loftwings carrying the boy around. No parent had stepped forward.

On the other hand, no one could actually manage to get the kid away from the loftwings. It was rare for the birds to completely disobey their riders, but in this, they seemed resolute. The boy would be staying with the loftwings, at least for now.

Gaepora pinched the bridge of his nose, looking at his daughter, who was currently giggling with the yet unmanned boy on his own loftwings back. This boy was going to be nothing but trouble, he could already feel it.

~~~

The master smith of Castle town wasn’t a slouch at hand-to-hand combat. He had never been formally trained in the subject. But he was a smith. Being a smithy was very physically taxing. He may be getting on a bit in years, but he could still swing a hammer and withstand the blazing heat of the forge.

So when he entered his shop in the morning and heard rustling behind the counter he kept his lockbox behind, he did not run to call the town guards. They wouldn’t even get here in time, and Smith could deal with the thief by himself.

When he rounded the corner of the counter with a shout, what he found was not what he expected. Instead, he found a little kid. Really, he couldn't be more than two or three. Instead of the lock box, he had been rooting around in a jar of cookies that Smith kept in the shop for the rather common occasion he got the munchies in the middle of the day.

The child was watching him with wide eyes, his gaze not wavering. He had far too much of an intelligent gaze for a two year old who had literally gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Smith looked around, foolishly hoping that the child’s mother would pop out from behind one of the shelves to claim the him.

No such luck, of course. Cursing his bleeding heart, Smith picked up the child and, hanging a sign on the door to tell his customers he was closed for the day, made his way home.

~~~

The Great Deku Tree was very old. He liked to take naps, which sometimes ended up lasting months. And he forgot things sometimes.

But he was pretty sure he wasn't actually asleep for more than a few hours this time. And he was sure he would have remembered this.

There was a child laying between his roots. An infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes, nestled in a bed of fallen leaves.

The Tree didn’t recognize him.

He would know if this was a Kokiri child. It was not. This child was as Hylian as they came. And yet, somehow, he had ended up here. Deep in the lost woods, where no adult could reach. At the very least, the fairies or the Kokiris would have woken him if there had been an intruder.

The Tree took his time examining the child, looking for any clues to his origins. He found none.

After a while, the baby started to fuss. The Deku Tree hummed, calling for a fairy to go fetch Saria. She was a responsible young lass. She would make sure the boy was well looked after.

He stayed contemplating the child long after he had been taken away by the Kokiri. That child would be one to make note of.

~~~

They were calling him the Hero of the Wind, now. She had smiled when she heard that, but to her, he would always be Link. She gave him that name, after all. She had named him after the previous hero when she found him. There had been no mother in sight to give her a different name, after all.

She hadn’t known where the baby had come from. When she had gone on an early morning walk one day, it had led to her finding a woven basket with a wailing infant inside it, washed up on the shore.

No one on Outset Island had a child this young, or was even pregnant. But Hylia would be damned if she left the babe there. Besides, she was lonely. Her husband had died a few years back, and her daughter had left Outset, rarely visiting. She wouldn’t mind someone to share her house with.

There were rumors. Of course there were. Outset island was a calm and peaceful place, but that didn’t mean all the people there were kind. Suddenly acquiring a child out of nowhere was suspicious. People called her a witch behind her back, not so subtly accusing her of stealing the child.

She had claimed that her daughter had come back from sailing to give Link to his grandmother, but no one had actually seen the young woman do so, so there were always skeptics.

And there was indeed a good reason that no one had seen her come back. It was because the woman hadn’t. No one but Granny would ever know the truth of it, she had vowed to herself.

But, eventually, the excitement died down. Link was a sweet boy. And, well, he had his Granny’s nose, after all, and his mother’s bright golden hair.

(And a few years after that, when she found Aryll on her front porch, surrounded by seagulls, people said much the same about the little girl.)

~~~

The Hero of Legend had humble beginnings, just like most of his brethren. Before he had started his journeys, he had grown up on a farm, looked after by his uncle. In truth, though, said uncle had no relation to him at all.

The nearby village thought he was just an orphan.

It wasn’t unusual. Families were torn apart often these days, sometimes literally, meeting brutal ends at the hands of monsters. Many times, this left children to wander, with no one to care for them. Sometimes, families would take them in and care for them like they were their own.

It was a bit odd that Link's Uncle would do so, as he had no wife to help him in raising a child. But after all, he had no wife, and never showed any signs of looking for one. Perhaps he wanted someone to look after him as he grew older, or just someone to share his house with. It must get lonely, all by himself in that huge farm, so far from town.

In truth, he couldn’t have done anything else, except take the kid in. He had been sucked in by the big eyes set into the sweet face the first time he set eyes on the boy.

The boy never made any mention of his previous family. But, thought his uncle, that was probably normal. Whatever happened to him before he found his way here couldn’t have been pleasant.

It was probably normal not to want to speak of it. And besides, there were apples that needed to be picked, animals to be fed, grain to be cut. There would be time for talking later. For now, he would focus on teaching Link the proper way to hold a cucco without being mauled.

~~~

Legend had it that the Hero of Hyrule started his adventure in a cave. What the Legends don’t tell is that he also started his life in that cave.

In his era, monsters roamed nearly everywhere. There were a few exceptions. One of these was a small cave. It was hidden deep in a forest, and generally ignored by all who passed it. Most who saw it assumed it was too small to be a proper shelter for anyone.

It was this assumption that made it the perfect spot for its inhabitants to hide. A group of fairies had stumbled across the cave, and claimed it for their own. It was undisturbed by the bigger creatures of the world, and it was the perfect size for them.

It was deep in this cave, soaked in fae magic, that this group of fairies found a tiny child. Or more accurately, he found them. When he wiggled through the crack of the cave opening and saw them, he giggled, clapping his hands.

They were uncertain at first. What was a young hylian doing out here? It shouldn't be possible. Where had he even come from? He couldn’t have made it all the way out here by himself.

Being naturally helpful creatures, they tried to search for the small one’s parents, but came up empty-handed. All the while, the child played with the strands of magic they conjured to entertain him.

Fairies have a poor sense of time. They just kept searching for the child’s parents. They fed him when he was hungry, and sang him to sleep when he was tired. They didn’t even notice that the child was growing up.

~~~

Wolves are not a common animal to see in Ordon. Generally, they preferred to stay away from the village.

There were exceptions. If there was a harsh winter, wolf packs might approach the village, looking for the easy meals the goats presented. If a wolf was sick, they might wander closer in confusion as well.

So when Uli looked out the window, and saw a large golden wolf in the middle of the goat pen, she was understandably shocked. The wolf looked healthy. Its fur coat was glossy, and even from this distance, Uli could see muscles rippled under its coat when it moved. There was no sickness in this creature. It was the height of summer. The game in the forest should be plentiful. There was no real reason for it to go after her goats.

Looking closer, she could see that the wolf was standing over something, likely one of her goats. She cursed, gripping the bow from the mantle that they kept for situations just like this, and exited the house.

When the wolf saw that he was being approached, he calmly turned away. Moving at a quick pace, he left behind the prize he was guarding, and returned to the edge of the forest. When he reached the forest, he turned to look back at her. With what looked disturbingly like a nod, he disappeared into the woods.

After watching for a few moments to make sure the wolf wouldn’t return, Uli turned to inspect the damage to the herd.

Instead of finding a dead goat, she found a small bundle of blankets. Filled with curiosity, she knelt, moving the blankets aside cautiously. What she found was the last thing she thought she would.

A toddler, curled up and sleeping peacefully, as if they hadn’t just been two feet away from a wolf.

Well. What was she to do with this, then?

~~~

There is no record of the Hero of Warriors from before the War. Most people from his era assume that it’s because he came from a little town in the middle of nowhere. A farm boy, a nobody who crawled up the ranks to become a war hero, a captain.

In reality, the Hero of Warriors was a rather special case. He was made for war. He was a savior of his people, just like his brethren, but a child does not a warrior make. And a warrior is what was needed.

He strode into Hyrule castle, among the swarm of other young men who were reporting to the recruiters in the front hall. In the chaos, the one who greeted him neglected to ask where the young man was from, and Link did not offer the information.

From that point on, he was only called Link, with no surname on his record. Eventually, that became Commander Link, and then Captain Link.

No one ever questioned where he had come from. It was usually best not to think about those things too hard.

~~~

There was no one alive who remembered the Hero of the Wild’s origins. That was to be expected. It had been well over a century since he was born, after all.

The hero himself could not remember, and all those who had known him from before barely knew about his family.

The story of his birth was lost, or so it seemed.

The truth was that there was no story to be told. The hero’s family had been a small one. A knight who served in Hyrule’s military, his wife, and a little daughter. When the daughter had been born, the wife had nearly died. The doctor had warned them that another child would likely kill her.

So, though they dearly wanted a son to carry on their family’s name, and for his father to train him the way of the sword, they were content with their little girl.

Fate had other plans for them, though. One morning when the daughter was about a year old, they had just sat down for breakfast when there was a knock on the door.

The knight stood to answer the door. When he opened it, he did not find one of their neighbors, or a messenger from the castle, as he had expected, but a young boy, maybe five or six years old.

When asked what he needed, he simply said that he was their son.

He waltzed right in and plopped himself down at the table, pleased as punch with himself.

The knight and his wife looked at each other in amusement. This might as well happen. They could afford to feed an extra mouth for a meal or two. They could go look for the little one’s parents after they ate.

[robininthelabyrinth]

A-Yuan wasn’t the only child among the Wen Remnants, just the youngest.

Children's Day - ao3

Lan Wangji carefully scooped up the boy out of his hiding place, tucked beneath a pile of stones, sick with fever and fast asleep.

It was a good hiding place. If Lan Wangji hadn’t played Inquiry and demanded to know if there were any living beings around in this cursed place of death, he would never have found the small child.

He remembered him – this was little A-Yuan, who Wei Wuxian had taken down into town to play, the one Lan Wangji had bought all those toys for in his confusion, the one who called him rich-gege. Barely more than two years old, having never known anything but war.

He was all that was left, now. There was nothing else left in the battlefield.

No one else left.

Lan Wangji closed his eyes in pain.

I’ll care for him for you, he promised Wei Wuxian’s ghost, wherever it might be now. Now that you cannot.

I’ll take him back to Gusu to raise as my own – wishing you were by my side.

-

-Earlier-

“Sect Leader!” one of his aides cried out when he staggered back into camp. “What – who’s that?”

Jiang Cheng looked down at the girl in his arms. She was – four, maybe? Five? He had no idea.

She looked a bit like Wen Qing.

“I found her hiding in the corner of the battlefield when she made a noise,” he said hoarsely. “The Wen sect remnants…by the time I got there, they were almost all dead already, all her family. She’s – she’s young. It didn’t seem right.”

Wei Wuxian always liked children, he thought vaguely to himself as he looked down at her. It wasn’t so much of a surprise that he would keep one there…in fact, if he thought back to that horrible meeting they’d had that one time he’d come to the Burial Mounds to try to talk to Wei Wuxian, he thought he remembered there being a small child there. This must be her.

She was bigger than he remembered, but that was what happened with small children, wasn’t it?

“Her surname is Wen?”

“No,” Jiang Cheng snapped automatically, and his aide took a step back from his vehemence. “The Wen sect is dead, you understand? All of them. The cultivation world refused to allow them to live, that much is obvious enough. Her surname…”

He looked down at her.

I failed Wei Wuxian, he thought grimly. I won’t fail his legacy.

“Her surname will be Jiang.”

-

-Earlier-

“We found this child hiding in the Demon Subduing Cave,” one of the guards reported, looking nervous. “Lianfeng-zun – what do we do with them?”

Jin Guangyao frowned down at the child, judging the child’s age to be about five or six – maybe seven, considering the likelihood of malnutrition at the Burial Mounds. If they were any younger, he would’ve said that the child ought to just execute them as useless; any older, and he would’ve had no choice but to declare them an enemy combatant, and thereby order them executed.

At this age, though…they were still young enough to be taught to forget their current surname, and to learn new loyalties, and yet old enough to perhaps remember a little of what they had learned, living as they had for a few years with the inventor of demonic cultivation.

Jin Guangyao glanced at the papers in his hands, full of barely legible scribbles, laying out powerful new spells and interesting ideas. They would help Xue Yang with his work – but not as much as a helper would, and naturally they’d just brutally executed all the other ‘helpers’ that might have been available.

Not exactly Jin Guangyao’s personal preference, but he wasn’t the one leading the Jin sect army.

Still, his father, who had been the one leading, had retired to his tent, and now Jin Guangyao was the one with the power, left to be in charge of mopping up. That, in turn, gave him a little more leeway, which meant he could implement his own thoughts, rather than badly thought out instructions.

“Put the child in my tent,” he said, and smiled. “The poor thing must have gotten lost and entered the battlefield – after we arrived. You understand?”

The guard saluted deeply. “Lianfeng-zun is kind and beneficent,” he said, and his expression was worshipful. “I will tell the others that the child is from some distant Jin branch.”

Jin Guangyao hadn’t intended for him to do that, but – well, he couldn’t exactly refute it now, could he, and anyway there were worse things to happen. Everyone would know that he had kindly taken in some orphaned child of war, which would be good for his reputation.

He smiled and nodded, and thought of the future.

-

-Earlier-

“Well, shit,” Nie Mingjue said, staring at the trio of children: nine or ten years old, he thought, maybe a little older, two girls and a boy. They stared back at him, wide-eyed and terrified – they were very clearly trying to sneak off the Burial Mounds down the back way.

Nie Mingjue rubbed his face, glad that he’d insisted on doing the forward scout work before the attack tomorrow morning himself rather than let it go to someone else. He hadn’t wanted to come to this blasted place in the first place, being that he still wasn’t sure exactly what had gone down with Wei Wuxian, who’d been a good man once. But good Nie cultivators had died at Lanling City at Wen Ning’s hands, the Jin sect claiming that that brutal attack was at Wei Wuxian’s instigation, and at the Nightless City at Wei Wuxian’s hands directly, and he didn’t have any evidence to exculpate the man, either; he had no grounds to look the families of those Nie cultivators in the eye and tell them not to pursue vengeance against the man who had slaughtered their brothers and fathers and sons, sisters and mothers and daughters, like they meant nothing.

They deserved vengeance.

Just as he had, for his father.

But at the same time…

“You’re all surnamed Wen, I take it?” he asked, and they slowly nodded. “Dafan Wen?”

Another nod.

“Wrong answer,” he said, making a snap decision. This wasn’t like his father at all, not really; he had wanted to kill Wen Ruohan, who had done the deed himself, while these children clearly hadn’t done anything. “Swear to me here and now that you won’t seek revenge for your sect or family, and you can be surnamed Nie instead.”

They looked at each other.

“Your family didn’t send you to run away because they wanted you to take revenge,” he said. It was a guess, but he could tell from the way their shoulders sagged that he was right. “They wanted you to live. Well?”

They swore.

He took them home.

-

-Earlier-

She tripped and fell flat on her face.

“Hey, girl!”

She looked up, eyes wide with terror – she hadn’t expected to be caught so soon – but the cultivator in front of her didn’t strike her down. He was a young man, just a few years older than her, and he looked nice, kneeling to help her up.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Did you get lost?”

Lost? From where would she get lost, exactly?

Despite that, she nodded.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Here isn’t a good place, though – we’re going to have a battle tomorrow…can you tell me where you’re from?” He frowned. “Or – can’t you speak?”

An idea suddenly came to mind, and she shook her head, lifting up her hands to mime signs like the ones she’d seen Lady Wen and her brother use sometimes when they needed to talk without disturbing others.

“Doesn’t talk,” he murmured to himself. “Clothing of white, ripped all to ribbons –”

She’d torn out any trace of the red sun. White was a common color, but she was old enough to know that she couldn’t let anyone know she was surnamed Wen.

“Oh, I’ve read about this before! Are you a bird yao that’s cultivated to humanity?”

What?

She’d been thinking of trying to pass as a traumatized war veteran, but she was only fourteen, after all; it wasn’t very believable. Of course, it was a lot more believable that bird yao – who would leap to that conclusion?

“My surname is Ouyang,” the man said, smiling brightly at her. “You should come back with me – I can teach you to speak, and we can give you a name…how about ‘Luo’ as a surname? That has to do with birds. Or we could surname you Bai, instead, since your clothing is white! Or maybe -”

She smiled helplessly at his nonsense. What a silly, cheerful man! Maybe she’d overestimated his age, he couldn’t be more than two or three years older, at most, and his brain was clearly not in the right place, filled up to the brim with romantic stories and adventure tales instead of facts.

It was a nice change, actually.

She accepted his hand as she stood.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

-

-Earlier-

Lan Wangji had returned home and submitted to a dreadful punishment. The elders he had injured on Wei Wuxian’s behalf were either in treatment or recovering.

As for the rest that had been at the Nightless City…

Many were dead.

Lan Qiren landed in the Burial Mounds, lips pressed tightly together.

He knew he was taking a risk in coming here to Wei Wuxian’s lair – no matter what Lan Wangji thought, whatever good points he’d had in the past, the man was now little better than a mad dog. He’d caused the death of three thousand people just the day before, three thousand innocents that hadn’t had anything to do with anything; why would he hesitate to attack his old teacher?

There was already talk of a siege – Jiang Cheng himself had promised to lead it, to wipe off the stain on the Jiang sect’s record, and the Jin sect had been right behind him. Even Nie Mingjue had been dragged in against his will, suborned by his sect members’ need for vengeance. As for the Lan Sect…Lan Xichen had looked so stricken by the thought that Lan Qiren had volunteered for the grim duty, despite Lan Qiren having never been much of a fighter and even less of a general. He intended to take only the smallest possible contingent, and to limit their work as much as possible to cleansing the dead rather than killing those who remained there – that much, at least, he could do for his nephew.

Either way, though, no matter his powers, Wei Wuxian would not live out the week.

If Lan Qiren desired vengeance, he need only wait.

And yet, here he was.

Alone, practically unarmed – and here nonetheless.

An old woman came out from the cave and squinted at him.

“It’s over,” she said sadly. “Isn’t it?”

Lan Qiren looked at her. One of the Wen remnants that Wei Wuxian had surrounded himself with, he assumed; the ones he’d given up his comfortable life for, claiming he was only acting as a righteous man ought. Perhaps he even had thought he was, back then.

Perhaps he really had been, back then.

“Yes,” Lan Qiren said, and cleared his throat. “After what he did at the Nightless City – the verdict is unquestionably death. But the rest of you…there are armies coming, and armies are not known for their leniency, especially not on passerby with the wrong surname. But they’re not here yet. There’s still time to flee – if you go now, you could take on a new surname and find some quiet place to live on.”

Lan Wangji had said they were civilians. Civilian life was to be prioritized above all else.

Lan Qiren was only doing what he must.

Despite his well-meant warnings, however, the old lady shook her head.

“There’s nowhere to go, and we won’t give up our surname,” she said, polite but stubborn to the last. “But thank you for taking the time to come here to tell us.”

“Wangji said that there were children here,” Lan Qiren insisted, ignoring her refusal. “If you won’t flee with them, at least send those that are old enough out on their own, and hide the younger ones. Tell them to forget their surnames – most people won’t rampantly murder children, so there’s a chance they’ll make it through, and live. Can you deny them that, just for pride?”

That gave the old woman pause.

“We’ll do what we can,” she said, and then eyed him. “How good are you at medicine?”

Lan Qiren frowned. “I can’t provide care –”

“She’s already dead. Come help anyway.”

The woman in question was not already dead, but dying – she was in her late teens, seventeen or eighteen at most, and she was in labor. From the glassiness of her eyes, the redness of her cheeks, and the threadiness of her pulse, it was clear that infection had long ago set in. It was not an exaggeration to say she was dead, little better than a corpse.

She was little more than a child.

“I don’t want her to die alone,” the old woman said. “But if you stay with her, I can use the time to try to take care of the rest. You’re not wrong, I suppose – the children, at least, deserve a chance to live on, even if it means leaving our surname behind.”

Lan Qiren looked down at the woman, unconscious already and unlikely to ever wake, and yet still whimpering. “And her child?”

The old woman looked surprised. “Can a child born like this still live?”

Lan Qiren had almost no medical training beyond the most superficial basics that were the necessity for any battlefield or night-hunt, with one sole exception: he had supervised the births of both his nephews by himself with little aid – his brother’s wife hadn’t wanted anyone else to be present, possibly in an attempt to prematurely enter her grave, possibly just out of spite. He had studied very hard in the days leading up to those births, and knew far more on the subject than most men did.

“It’s possible,” he said. “Unlikely, but – possible.”

He hesitated for a long moment.

“I can take the baby,” he finally said. “Pass him off as some war-orphan child of distant Lan cousins, sent to me on account of their deaths. I could raise him, or else give him to my cousin to raise; he’s got a large enough family that no one would question it.”

“Why would you do that?”

Lan Qiren looked at the woman who was dying, little more than a child herself. “Because of the children I can’t help.”

The old woman was quiet for a little while.

“Very well,” she said, and leaned forward to whisper the name the young woman had thought about for her child into his ear. “That works with Lan as a surname, wouldn’t it? That’s not bad.”

“Not bad at all,” Lan Qiren agreed, and rolled up his sleeves, settling down beside the girl. “Not bad at all.”

[retroyousei]

Female characters in retro shojo [70s edition, part 2]

In this series, the female characters in 70s shojo are being analysed. In part one, three of the most common types were examined; the “average” protagonists, the villains and the tomboys. In this article, other three very common types are being discussed.

The westerners innocent blondies

They are either orphans who just want to find a place to belong, princesses who dream about falling in love, or normal girls who always knew that they weren’t where they meant to be and they somehow discover that they are royalty or from a noble family. Either way, they are lively, innocent, but naive, so sometimes they may be betrayed or belittled, but they have a kind heart that knows how to forgive and have faith on people, so they make friends easily. Many times they are portrayed as Tomboys who love the nature and sometimes they get into trouble accidentally. They may seem helpless and dense sometimes, but despite all of this, they are actually very independent, as they may travel to the other side of the world all alone if they have to (they will make new friends wherever they go anyway) and if they need to, they can kick some serious ass too. But their most precious weapon is their inner strength to move forward, no matter what.

In “Candy Candy” Candy, is an orphan girl who goes through so many hardships. At first, her best friend Annie gets adopted, leaving her behind, but her troubles had just begun. She gets adopted by a rich family to keep company to their daughter, named Elisa who is the one who, along with her brother will constantly try to make her life miserable, firstly when she was staying at their house, then in the private school in England and afterwards when she was working as a nurse. But Candy makes many friends and has many allies and with her inner strength and lust for life, she overcomes all the obstacles that she faces. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t lose some of her dearest friends along the way. As she grows up she learns the hardships of life, but all those obstacles makes her only stronger and she never loses her hope for a better tomorrow.

In “the Rose of Versailles” we see Marie Antoinette evolving from an innocent and silly girl, to an irresponsible young woman, to a sorrowful, regretful, but determined queen. In the first volumes, she was still a child who just wanted to have fun and didn’t care about homework, traditions and preparations for being a queen. Later, during her first years as a queen she was portrayed as a naive person who didn’t make the right choices. Also, her friendship with Countess de polignag was a bad influence for her as she goaded her into gambling. But she was also well intensioned and just wanted her loved ones to be happy. Oscar always tried to be her voice of reason, but it wasn’t enough. Later it was more and more clear that she was spending her country’s money in clothes, gardening and building the petit Trianon to be with her inner circle, because she wanted to fill the void of being a woman who cannot be with her beloved. In the end, during the time that she was captured, before her decapitation, she surprisingly matured, realised what she had done all those years and wanted to make things right, but it was too late. Her final thoughts was about her family, Fersen and Oscar and she was proud and composured until her last breath. Throughout the story she was portrayed as an innocent woman who was sacrificed for the sake of politics.

In “Alpen Rose” Jeudi is an amnesiac girl who lives in Alpes with a boy named Lundi. She works as a nurse and has a quiet life, until a French nobleman captures her. Luckily she is very clever and with Lundi’s help they get away. And that’s how their journey towards finding Jeudi’s parents start. Along the way, Jeudi befriends many people, like a little girl with his brother and his girlfriend, a journalist who helps her a lot, a young couple and a mysterious musician named Leonard Aschenbach. Jeudi is different from other characters in this particular category because of her wit and courage. She also has a strong sense of justice and in matters of life and death, such as hiding from the nazis in the trains, planning traps for them and solving mysteries with the information that she gathers with the help of her friends, she succeeds. She also cares about the others and tries to see the good side in everyone. When she finally found her mother, she was asked from her grandparents to pretend that she wasn’t her daughter, because she was blind and in a fragile state, besides there was another girl who resembled Alicia (Jeudi’s real name) a lot. She had patience and it was repaid in the end.

Rosalie from “Rose of Versailles” was a poor girl who lived with her mother and her sister Joanne and she just wanted for others to be healthy and was happy with the simplest of things, like being able to buy bread and helping other children in the neighborhood who can’t afford to eat anything. When her mother is killed by Polignag who was in fact her birth mother, she is devastated and swears that she is going to get revenge from the nobles who don’t care about anyone else. When she befriends Oscar and Andre and stays at Jerjeyes household, she learns fencing, manners, horseriding and and history, to make her debut in Versailles. There, she meets the woman who killed her mother, her sister who suicides because of Polignag and managed to get away from her. She also felt disappointed with her other sister, Jeanne who betrayed her, but she was sad when she was killed. Later she meets and falls in love with Bernard, a friend of Oscar and they get married. As the years passed by, she evolved from a stereotypical nice girl, into an accomplished woman who can protect herself and the others. By the end of the story she was pretty much the only one from the main characters who stayed alive.

There are many other characters who fit this image, such as Georgie from “Lady Georgie”, who lived in Australia with a family that wasn’t hers and after meeting an English noble young man, Lowel, they fall in love, so she decides to follow him in England where she makes new friends, faces many enemies and also finds out about her real family. Lynn from “Lady Lady” travels to England to live with her father and her step sister and there she faces her evil step mother and her children, but she also finds many allies too.

Note: “Anne of green gables” was and still is popular in Japan, because of Anne’s passion for freedom and expression, the book’s “pastel” aesthetic, so Anne’s imagination and strength despite being an orphan, might have inspired those characters.

The worthy rivals

Those ladies tend to have what the main heroine lacks and they serve as her opposite. They tend to be considered prettier than the main characters and that circumstances are easier for them, something that isn’t true. They also appear to be elegant and refined, on oppose to the heroine who is more clumsy and tomboyish. They are usually more practical, down to earth and skilful than the main heroine, causing her to feel inferior to them. They may start off as the snobbish girls who look down on her and don’t take her seriously, due to her clumsiness and her easy going attitude towards work, but as the time goes by, they realise her real talent and her worth, causing them to consider her as a worthy opponent and expect great things from her. They may appear as almost perfect at everything they do, but the truth is that they are also insecure and they are having other types of problems, such as finding it very difficult to make friends, due to their cold nature, as they always appear antagonistic and determined to win. But as time goes by they may change their attitude with the help of the heroine, or better, with their own realisation.

Ayumi from “Glass Mask” is the greatest example of this. She is the daughter of a famous actress and a famous director and she was always on spotlight ever since she was a kid. She is beautiful, refined, elegant and admired by everyone, also considered to be a genius, as she excels at acting techniques, dancing and reciting. Her family environment helped her to pursue a successful career as an actress. But that doesn’t mean that she is rest assured as she always seeks to exceed her parents’ talent, so that people will see her as her and not as a daughter of famous parents. She also stated that no one truly knows how hard she worked in order to reach her current level. And that hard work was something that she succeeded on her own. When she encountered Maya for the first time and faced her on the stage, even though she (Ayumi) was better than her, she felt as though she was defeated. From that moment, even though it seemed like Ayumi had everything and Maya had nothing, Ayumi always thought that Maya had something that she lacked; a deep understanding of the characters that she portrays. Ayumi may excel at the techniques of acting, but she never manages to portray the true depth of emotion of each character. Her portraits of characters are accurate and true to the play, but Maya’s are refreshing and original. Even when it’s clear that she is way ahead of Maya, she always walks off stage with the feeling that she was defeated. As a rival, she is also very fair and she likes to unlimitedly challenge Maya in many ways. Of course, as the story progresses, Ayumi’s talent evolves and she becomes more open as a person.

In “Candy Candy”, Flanny is a girl who works as a nurse in the same hospital with Candy. She is the best of the nurses there, as she’s always on time, always knows what to do, is very practical and smart, yet she is rather cold and distant towards others. She only cares to get things done, that’s why she is often annoyed by Candy’s bubbly nature. What’s more, as soon as she learns that Candy is an Ardley, she assumes that she only works out of boredom, contrary to her, who she has to support her poor family. She even goes at the front, to work as a nurse and support the soldiers there. Candy respects her for that this and she visits Flanny’s family to inform them about her decision, as her own relationship with them is bad, as she only sends them her monthly allowance and they never seem to appreciate her hard work. Her and Candy make an interesting dynamic and many stated that both of them make the perfect nurse, with Candy’s gentle and caring personality and Flanny’s practical skills. At the end, both of them learned from one another.

In “Swan”, Sayoko is a refined woman who loved ballet ever since she was a child. But when she meets Masumi for the first time, she starts being insecure about herself and afraid that she will overshadow her, as she’s younger than her with a bright future, whereas she had a night of glory as a prima ballerina, but after an accident she needs to learn how to dance again. But she still feels sympathy for her, besides they both shared their love for ballet, thus a rivalry begins.

In “Aim For The Ace” Reika is the best player on the tennis team and so her nickname is “Madame Butterfly”, due to her grace in the field. Hiromi is fascinated by her and even though at first Reika isn’t impressed by her, later she appreciates her skills and thus a friendship begins.

The “damsel in distress” love antagonists

They are fragile, sweet and pretty, that’s for sure. They are either the daughters of an important family which aspires to marry them with the love interest, thus expand their power, or they are someone who because of some circumstances, grew closer to the love interest, before the main character even could or when she was separated from him for various reasons. Nevertheless, they are in a better social situation from the heroine. Their character arc usually begins at some crucial point of the plot, which is halfway through the story, when the main character and the love interest’s relationship have had already developed, but had not quite bloomed yet. They are considered to be innocent and kind, contradictory to the main character who is much more spontaneous, causing trouble to other sometimes. As expected, they slowly fall in love with the main love interest, in some cases before the main character even realises that she loves him. Either way, those characters add an extra dose of melodrama and constitute to the story, sometimes a little bit, some others a lot to a point of changing it.

Shiori from “Glass Mask” is an interesting case. She is a lady from a wealthy family, so she’s elegant and accomplished. She’s also very pretty, but fragile, as she suffers from anemia and many times she passes out. At first, she’s sympathetic, as she goes out with Masumi and starts falling for him, even though Masumi loves Maya. But as the story progresses, looking at the way Masumi talks to her (Maya), she starts to suspect that he likes her. Slowly but steadily, she evolves into a manipulative woman, who uses her weak health to keep him close. She sees Maya as a threat and she goes out of her way to make her seem like a bad person in front of Masumi. When he learns about all of this, he breaks up with her, but afterwards, Shiori attempts suicide and passes out. When she recovers, she loses almost all of her sense and she goes mad. She’s hospitalised in her room, where she barely speaks and sometimes she growls Maya’s name, rips apart her pictures in magazines and orders bouquets of purple roses to rip them too. At this point of the story, her parents don’t allow him to break their engagement, until their daughter recovers, leaving him responsible for her. In conclusion, Shiori evolves from a sympathetic woman, to a pathetic creature who’s adrift to its feelings.

Susanna from “Candy Candy” is a young talented actress, with a good heart, who works at the same theater company with Terry. During the time of their troupe’s performances in Chicago, she starts falling for him. Seeing that Terry’s heart is set on elsewhere she tries to keep him distant from Candy. Later on, in New York, during a rehearsal, the spotlight that was above of Terry, was ready to fall, so Susanna ran and pushed him away to save him, but the spotlight fell down before she could walk away from it. In the hospital, the troupe learns that she’s alive and healthy, but unfortunately the doctors were unable to save her legs and were forced to amputate them, meaning that her career as an actress was over. Terry took the responsibility, having a strong sense of duty and being pressured by Susanna’s mother. When Candy arrived to New York and see his play, she learned about it soon. Before she even fathom the news, she ran to catch up to Susanna, to save her from a balcony, before she could jump, trying to suicide, to free Terry and let him be with the one he loved. Candy manages to save her and decides to leave them be. So Terry chose to stay with Susanna to take care of her.

Lalissa from “Haikara-San Ga Toru” is a character that appears in the second half of the story. She’s a Russian noble, who arrived to Tokyo with her husband, who is in fact not her real one, but he’s Shinobu who suffers from amnesia after the war and believes that he’s married to her. Lalissa is elegant and quiet, but sad and the truth is that she had lost her real husband, that’s why she wants Shinobu near her, due to his resemblance to him. Benio, who’s Shinobu’s sweetheart, believing that he was dead, was shocked when she saw them together. But due to the circumstances and the fact that Lalissa suffers from tuberculosis, Benio decides to give up on him. But when the Kanto earthquake stroke, Lalissa was severely injured and ready to die, whereas Shinobu regained his memory and she told him to marry Benio and be happy.

Another mention, is Marie from “Alpen Rose” who liked Lundi and that was the reason that she miraculously stood up from her wheelchair to help him, although it’s clear that he likes Jeudi.

[dear-mrs-otome]

Johann Georg Faust - 2nd Birthday (His POV) - Yet Another Terrible Summary

(Faust: "...The children will wake up.")

Here is my irreverent, only nominally-guaranteed accurate rendition of Faust’s 2nd birthday story in his POV.

(We start with a one-liner, ‘narrator voice’ Faust saying how he had learned from a very young age that the world was an absurd place.)

It’s February 28th, and at his church, MC has arrived with a bag she offers him, claiming they’re delicious treats she wanted to share. He asks if she’s there to celebrate his birthday, pointing out to her there’s no February 29th this year. She deflates, grumbling that she hadn’t expected him to see through things so quickly, and he tells her that if she does something like that out of the blue of course he’s going to wonder why.

He can’t believe she’s trying again, after he’d told her last year he didn’t want to celebrate and that the day was meaningless - it’s merely the day he was found after having been abandoned as a baby. No sentimentality to it. But he can also clearly recall the way she’d told him last year she wanted him to be happy on his birthday...and bemused by that sentiment still, he takes the proffered bag.

He says that if it’s a gift, he’ll take it because he can think of someone it’ll make happy. MC finally notices the small child hovering around when he says this, and she has a spittake moment of ILLEGITIMATE KIDDO?? Faust teases her about having a very wild imagination, causing her to sputter, and he pinches her cheeks lightly at her flailings before he hands the bag of candy off to the little boy.

The child seem incredulous at the gift, but MC assures him she’d be happy if he ate it, and she asks him his name. The boy tells her it is Hugo in a small voice. She asks Hugo if he’s from around here, but Faust answers for him - he says he is, but he’s due to circumstances he’s about to take the child to the orphanage now.

MC surprises him by asking if it’s no bother, can she come along too? He tells her it makes no matter to him - wondering to himself if she’s worried about the kiddo. She thanks him, and urges little Hugo to get ready to go, his little hand fast in hers.

They’re greeted by the orphanage matron when they arrive, who kindly welcomes Hugo to his new home. MC hands the boy off with a soft look, and Faust is all in a hurry to leave now that his duty is done...when one of the orphan children notices the priest and the lady and calls out to them.

Spotted, Faust thinks, and no sooner has the first kid called out than the rest of the kids come running over as well, all crowding around him and clamoring for them to stay and play.

Faust immediately shuts the idea down, but MC cajoles that if they have time, they should stay and play. He warns her that she will only regret the idea - when they’re interrupted by the matron asking if they wouldn’t mind actually? She’s short-handed on help and needs to step out to get some things but can’t leave the kids unattended.

She really is not taking no for an answer, and thus Faust and MC find themselves babysitting the orphanage until she returns.

Some time later, Faust is pulling an ‘I told you so’ on an exhausted MC, who’s been run ragged by the eager children. She flops to a seat, and looks up at him soberly, where he’d just picked up a child and put them to sleep. She observes that he’s good with the children, and he says he has practice - he used to take care of some a long time ago.

He spares a moment to wonder to himself how many of them grew up to lead out their lives, given how life in an orphanage long ago was far from easy. Then as he’s looking out over the children he realizes they’re short one, and says as much aloud.

MC and he go searching, and shortly they find Hugo outside near the gates, huddled and shivering in the cold winter air. Faust realizes this is more than simply being sad about his new surroundings, and it’s MC tries to herd him inside so he doesn’t catch a cold.

But little Hugo balks, and he says no, he wants to stay here - if he caught a cold and died, would he meet his mom and dad in heaven?

Faust realizes from the stunned expression on MC’s face that she’s finally understood the truth of Hugo’s situation. His parents both had died in an accident and he was forced to enter the orphanage when no one came to collect him after the funeral. Faust thinks it’s not unreasonable for Hugo to be saddened, but…

“There’s no guarantee you’ll meet someone who has passed on. It’s pointless to choose death for that,” he tells Hugo. “Unless of course someone were to be dissected after death for posterity...then their death wouldn’t be a total waste.”

MC sputters at him for saying such a thing to a child, but Faust is remorseless, still thinking it’s foolish to have any hopes or expectations for after death. As a priest, he often tells people that ‘those who pass on are ushered into the kingdom of heaven’...but he himself has never seen Heaven, or God provide any sort of salvation.

Hugo wonders aloud why his mom and dad had to die? Why did God decide such a thing?

Faust tells him that the world is an absurd place and urges him that if he has any sort of doubts, to think about how he can live in defiance of his destiny...rather than letting winter’s cold choose life or death for him. He takes his jacket off and slips it over those tiny shoulders, and watches as MC wipes away the tears that fall from Hugo’s eyes, comforting him.

He thinks...that he cannot recall what sadness is, what it feels like anymore. But he can tell how incredibly warm the hand MC slips into Hugo’s is.

After they’ve gotten the children all settled for their nap, MC replaces Faust’s jacket with a blanket on the sleeping Hugo and turns to him, holding it as she stares at him. He finally asks her, what?? And she asks what sort of children it was he’d spent time with in the past.

Faust teases her about asking something out of the blue like that, and for being so keenly interested - startling him when she unapologetically agrees that she does want to know about him, and if he tells her she’ll return his jacket.

Faust grumbles that it’s a lame deal, given that it’s not a fun story to hear...but he doesn’t get the impression that she’s asking out of idle curiosity or a whim alone, so he indulges her. He tells her that when he was a baby, he was found by an older nun and grew up in an orphanage located in an old church. He says that they were terribly poor, but he survived, and when he got older he helped take care of the other children. Many of them would die before winter’s end, or disappear after being taken in by foster parents.

Eventually, he was fostered out himself and the nun who raised him died of an illness, and the orphanage was closed. End of story.

He thinks that the abbreviated version he told her was the parts that didn’t hurt...but she still looks up at him with a sadness in her eyes when she asks what sort of woman was the nun?

Faust says that she was incredibly kind, too kind to ignore an abandoned child, and probably too compassionate for her own good.

He thinks how she was kind up until the very end, giving and giving of herself to anyone….and he recalls a time when she’d come to him.

“Thank you for taking care of everyone, Johann” she had said. “But why don’t you put the books down and go play?”

“It’s fine. Even if I make friends with them, they will all leave someday,” he had told her.

“Johann...The reason why you never cry is because you keep your sadness locked away…”

He can still see the sad smile she had worn and hear the conversation they’d had, rising to the surface of a sea of old memories. He coldly waits for those lingering remnants to pass...when his reverie is interrupted by MC telling him she’s thankful the woman found little Faust. That even if the world is an absurd place, she’s happy to be able to celebrate his birthday with him now.

Her words stun him into silence, leaving him only able to stare at her faint smile. He’d never thought of it that way - the consideration to be thankful for such a thing. Her words shed a new light on his cold memories, and sneak their way into his heart.

He teases her though, saying that she speaks of odd things and he wonders if she’s merely angling to dig through people’s pasts and root out their weaknesses. A sputtering MC vehemently denies she’d do such a thing and accuses him of being a smartass, and righteously stomps towards him to shove the jacket back at him...when she steps on a stray toy block, loses her footing, and crashes into him.

They both tumble to the ground, her atop him, and she’s staring down at him wide-eyed as she beings babbling apologies - only to have them fade into muffled sounds when he quickly reaches up and presses her face onto his chest to stifle her voice.

“You’ll wake the children,” he warns her...though he pauses a moment to linger on the soft feel of her cheek on his bare skin, where his shirt has fallen into disorder. He’s thinking, this woman is unbelievable, as he chides her for such - sighing heavily and asking if she gets a kick out of bothering him.

But he’s getting a kick out of her blushing face and her averted eyes, the sight stirring his mean streak enough that he can’t let the opportunity to give her a hard time pass. He teases her about being the one with the red face when she pushed him down...and is amused by her appalled reaction. He says she’s something else to straddle a man with a face like that, right next to a bunch of sleeping children...and he strokes his hands up the thighs that bracket his hips, enjoying the little sigh she lets out.

The moment is broken by a soft sound from one of the children tossing in their sleep, and MC leaps off him like a scalded cat. The whole situation is so incredibly absurd that Faust can’t help laughing, even if it’s met by a glare from MC as she asks him what is so funny.

He’s still chuckling as he points out her reaction, and how amusing it all was...all the while thinking, it has been a very long time since he has laughed so much. He slips back on the jacket she shoves at him, and tells her that he never gets tired of watching her - he wants to keep her close at hand, so he can observe her always.

His words have her turning her face away, but the look in her eyes before she does makes him happy. He wants to know more about her, he thinks. What manner of things would he discover, if he caught her and kept her all to himself, and figured out what made her tick? Her presence in this world, that he looks at through such cold eyes, stirs his heart.

FIN

(many thanks as always to @mikotomizuki for giving this a second set of eyes!)

[cosmicjoke]

Levi and Zeke:  Their similarities and the Fundamental differences between Them:

I’ve recently been having a discussion with @ourmondobongo, and it’s spurred me to want to kind of analyze further the fundamental and philosophical differences between Levi and Zeke.  I know I’ve gone into this thoroughly already, but my discussion with ourmondobongo has really made me want to delve in even deeper.  First though, let me thank them for, as always, inspiring such insightful discussion among the fan base!

Some really interesting ideas were posted here, about Zeke’s experiences growing up in Liberio informing his world view and his views on the worth, or rather, lack thereof, in human life.   ourmondobongo suggested that, because of Zeke’s experiences with his parents, utilizing him as a tool for the Resistance, and his subsequent utilization by the Marlyean army as a tool of war, it ended up warping his perception, and influencing him to believe that all human life is inherently worthless unless it can be molded into a tool or a weapon to further some goal.  I agree with this interpretation of Zeke’s mindset and what shaped it.  This is undoubtedly how Zeke views the world, and humanity as a whole, and he’s deemed, because of his own suffering, brought about by his experiences affirming this world view, that life is not worth living.  Because he sees life as without value unless one can make themselves useful in some way, in his view, the suffering inherent in that makes life fundamentally pointless and meaningless and not worth the effort.

Now, where I diverge slightly from ourmondobongo’s view on this is in relation to Zeke’s influence upon Levi in the final arc, or rather, what they say about Zeke’s philosophy overriding or undercutting Levi’s own.  They said that Levi’s belief in an intrinsic value in human life is bombarded and undermined during the final arc of SnK, Zeke’s own belief in the worthlessness of human life being affirmed to him again and again by the chaos and destruction around them, the rightness of his philosophy and belief that this sort of destruction can only stop with the eradication of the Eldian people being confirmed.  But see, the thing is, I don’t think Zeke is at all showing Levi something new, or something which he hasn’t already known all his life.

Zeke claims that his experiences in life make him uniquely suited to understanding the conflict between Eldian’s and Marleyeans, and that his experiences make him uniquely capable of knowing how to solve that conflict.  But Zeke is nothing if not a unfailingly self-centered egotist, someone driven purely by selfish, egotistical viewpoints, unable and unwilling to perceive anything outside of his limited world view.  His life ISN’T unique, his experiences AREN’T unique.  They’re, first of all, shared by every single Eldian on both Marley and in other countries around the world.  Further, and more importantly to the point I’m about to make, they’re shared by Levi.  

Zeke grew up being treated and regarded as a second-class citizen, relegated to a limited area, an internment zone, which he wasn’t allowed to leave unless given direct permission by the powers that be, and regarded as something less than human by the people of Marley.  Well, these are all things Levi himself experienced growing up too, and, I would argue, to an even more extreme degree than Zeke.

Levi grew up in the Underground, a sprawling, subterranean city filled with the so called “dregs of society”.  A place where the poor, the persecuted, the sick, the dying, the deviant and the criminal were either forced to flee to, or more unfortunate still, were born into.  All this underneath the Capital of Paradis, Sina, the richest, most exclusive district inside the Walls.  A place where the elite of society lived and worked and raised their families in wealth and luxury.  The irony of the poorest, most poverty stricken area inside the Walls being directly beneath the richest, most affluent area inside the Walls can’t be overstated.  

Perhaps most relevant to note in this comparison between Zeke’s experience growing up in an internment zone and Levi’s growing up in the Underground, is that the people of the Underground were not only considered second-class citizens, but relegated to something even below that, considered not citizens at all.  They were literally denied citizenship within all areas above ground, within the Walls, and if they somehow managed to make it to the surface, and were found out, they would be promptly deported back to the Underground, where they would continue to be denied any and all rights given to the people up above.  And, it can be easily argued, that the people of the Underground were treated in many ways significantly worse than the Eldian’s inside the interment zone in Liberio.  The people of Liberio seemed relatively well provided for, able to find work, able to earn a living, able to have homes for their families and put food on the table, essentially allowed a sustainable and comfortable life, if one burdened by outside prejudice.  They weren’t made to live in squalor.  Largely, no doubt, because they were seen as an unwanted, but useful resource for the Marleyean government.  The people of the Underground were provided no such provisions.  They were viewed as simple refuse, society’s unwanted and unneeded surplus.  Poverty and depravation ran rampant in the Underground, a lack of resources and support from above resulting in high crime rates and desperation, to things like murder, prostitution, violence and other sorts of criminality.  Further, leading to things like rampant orphaning of children, likely due to starvation and disease claiming the lives of parents, etc...  It was a place literally cut off from the sun, a world of perpetual darkness, sickness, poverty and dire straits.  They received no aid or support from above, were not provided any of the benefits or privileges of the people on the surface, were not offered any sort of path to success, or betterment of their lives.  They were just plainly rejected and left to the whims of fate.  This alone makes it a more difficult and desperate place than the interment zones of Liberio, for even there the Eldian’s were given opportunities to improve their lives through the Warrior Unit programs.  

You might try to point out that Zeke’s experience differs from Levi’s in how he was taught that he, and on his assumption, every other Eldian, would only ever be seen and treated as a tool to be used for some greater gain, and that Levi, at least, had the love of his mother, and Kenny to show him the ropes of how to survive in a place as ruthless as the Underground, and so Levi couldn’t possibly understand what it means, the way Zeke does, to be seen as a tool, or to be deemed worthless outside of ones utility.  But I would counter this simply, by saying that Levi grew up, spent the first, several years of his life, in a brothel, where the very mother who loved him also worked as a whore.  Through this experience alone, it can be easily assumed that Levi was exposed to repeated instances of his mother being EXACTLY used as a tool, as an object who’s sole purpose was to give men pleasure.  From his birth, then, Levi was exposed and taught the brutal lesson that the sole most important person in his life, his mother, the one person we can assume was the only positive influence and relationship he had, for the first, several years of his life, was seen and treated by everyone else as nothing more than a tool for their basest and most perverse satisfaction.  I can scarcely imagine a more horrific or cruel example of a young child being taught the same lesson Zeke seems to think is unique to him alone, that people’s lives are worthless outside of what use they can provide for someone or something else.  Beyond that, Levi was again forced to face a situation in which he and his two, closest friends in Furlan and Isabel were used as tools by other people, recruited by Lobov to kill Erwin and retrieve from him an incriminating document, promised, if they succeeded, citizenship above and a handsome payday, only to find out later the entire scenario had been set up by Erwin himself to press Levi and his friends into military service, to be used as tools in the fight against the Titans.  Both of these are prime examples of Levi being faced with the lesson that he and those he cared about were seen by people above ground as nothing more than tools, to be used at their disposal.  So this was a concept Levi was already well acquainted with by the time Zeke showed up, a merciless lesson in the harshness, violence, brutality and suffering of life.  Zeke didn’t experience anything Levi didn’t in turn, and in many ways, with greater extremity.  

Anyone trying to claim, also, that Zeke had no positive influences in his life like Levi did would be wrong.  Zeke had Mr. Ksavar, for one, and his grandparents, for another.  Mr. Ksavar asked nothing of Zeke, merely showed care and concern for him, and a desire to spend time with him, playing catch.  It was Zeke who offered to inherit the Beast Titan from Mr. Ksavar, not something forced on him.  And while Zeke’s grandparents may have tried to enforce Marleyean history on him in regards to the Eldian’s, they did so out of love for him, in a misguided attempt to PROTECT him, because they cared, not because they were trying to use him in any way.  

My point in talking about all of this is to draw a parallel between Zeke’s life, and Levi’s, and then to demonstrate how, despite deeply similar life experiences, the two of them diverge in vital and fundamental ways which, more than anything, can only be attributed to their strengths of character and natural inclinations as people.

Essentially, the gist of my argument is this.  Zeke is a bad person.  Levi is a good person.  And there can be no excuses, or influencing factors found in either of their lives to credit for the way either of them turned out, other than themselves, other than their own natures.

Because Zeke let his life experiences twist him into a heartless, emotionless, unfeeling sociopath who murders other people without remorse, and regards other human lives as meaningless, worthless trash, expendable and disposable as a means to his own ends.  He let his experiences in life serve as an EXCUSE for his natural cruelty.  He chose to view the lives of others only through the prism of his own experiences, and cast a judgment upon the worth of those other lives.  The true reveal of Zeke’s megalomaniacal egotism is in how he finds himself unable to separate the lives of others from his own.  In how he’s unable to view the lives of others as anything other than an extension of his own existence.  Because he deems his own life worthless, then so too must be the lives of everyone else.

Levi, then, is perfectly his opposite.  It isn’t because of Levi’s life experiences that he’s turned out the way he is.  It is IN SPITE of his life experiences that he has.  Everything Levi’s ever experienced in his life, according to Zeke’s philosophy, should have turned him into a monster.  He should have come out of the Underground a sociopathic, unfeeling, brutally uncaring and violent man, ready to take from and use others for nothing more than his own, personal gain, because that was the lesson his life had taught him.  Because that was what he’d been shown over and over again.  That life is cruel, and ruthless, and uncompromising in its unfairness, and that to live is to suffer.  And yet, Levi came out of the Underground with a greater capacity for compassion, feeling, love and kindness than any other character in SnK.  He continually and routinely, throughout the series, demonstrates an incredible empathy, consideration, sympathy, generosity and understanding for other people.  He is immensely accepting and nonjudgmental, and always, always goes out of his way to express gratitude towards others for their own sacrifices and efforts.  He does his absolute best to protect the lives of others, constantly putting his own at risk to help others live, constantly putting his own at risk to save whoever he can.  Constantly and consistently, Levi places the lives of others above his own in terms of worth.

And here’s the thing that makes Levi most remarkable of all.  The thing which demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt the immense strength of his character.  Levi very well knows that life is cruel, that life is brutal, that life is unfair, and that often people die for no damned good reason at all, that they suffer for no reason at all.  He very well knows that people are breathtakingly cruel and terrible to one another, that people treat one another in unspeakably horrific and unforgivable ways.  He very well knows that the dream of a lasting and peaceful world, a lasting peace between humans, is nothing more than a pipe dream, an unrealistic, unattainable ideal.  A fancy only a child should genuinely be able to believe in.  And yet, once again, despite KNOWING this, despite every lesson and experience in his life impressing this awful reality upon him again and again and again, Levi still does everything within his limited power to ease the suffering of others, to improve their lives, to protect them and show them kindness, to help in any way he can, whichever way he’s able.  Despite knowing the futility of life, the pointlessness of suffering, the injustice of other people’s cruelty, despite knowing these things INTIMATELY, Levi still has in him an open, generous, kind and caring heart.  Levi still has in him a deep, unending well of compassion and an unwavering desire to protect and better the lives of all the people around him.  It isn’t even Levi’s own dream that he fights for, it is the dreams of OTHERS that he fights for.  He can’t ever fully embrace this notion of a peaceful existence, free of violence and deprivation and cruelty, because he knows too well the way of the world.  He’s been too mired in the indifferent reality of nature and the human condition to ever, really believe it.  But in spite of that, IN SPITE OF IT, he fights to protect that dream and belief that others carry, that others strive towards, that others commit themselves to.  He gives everything he has, every piece of himself, to protect a dream that he himself can’t even fully believe in, and for no reason more than that it is something which gives others hope, something which gives other’s a sense of purpose, something which one day, possibly, however slim the chance, might come to pass.  

It is all in spite of Levi’s experiences in life, all in spite of his weary and cynical understanding of the world and the people in it, that Levi commits himself to kindness, compassion and the chance to help others, in whatever ways he can, even as he knows deep down the ultimate futility in it, even as he knows his own, relative powerlessness in the face of nature’s unyielding and uncaring apathy. 

And that really is the fundamental difference between Levi and Zeke.  Two men who have experienced such similar lives, and who have learned early on their lives the cruelties of existing in this world, but one who reacts to those cruelties with defiance and courageous opposition, standing in the face of overwhelming odds, while the other yields to it and lets it excuse his cruelty in turn, bowing to its power and letting it consume him. 

[hoskinsvarietyshow]

We only see three generations in fullmetal. Kids baring burdens so fucking heavy their bodies break in one way or another. Grandparents raising their grand children because they're the only adults left to the ones lucky enough to have grand parents. And the youngest of the generation bridging the others.

Winry has her grandmother because even the doctors don't come home from the Amestrian war machine. Lan Fan has her grandfather but is essentially a child soldier. And they're the lucky one's of all the kids you see in the story. Ling, Mei, Ed, Al, Rose, Paninya, all essentially orphans to one degree or another. Ling, Mei and the Elrics may as well not have fathers.

Then you have the people who were barely adults during the most recent war. Mustang, Hawkeye, Havoc, Fury, Hughes, the Armstrongs, Izumi, Sig, Scar, the Chimeras, Tucker, Kimbly. And their interactions with old people are essentially opposite sides of a chess board. The young are clawing their way up through the military riddled with the equivalent emotional and psychological damage that these kids are baring on their bodies. Some of them broke under all that weight and went real, real bad. A few brave souls even try to start a new generation before the machine chews them up like dog meat.

So you have these two parallel stories. The kids sacrifice whole limbs. Their entire bodies. Their innocence. Their religion. They lose big obvious holes in themselves just to keep going another day. And it turns out that when everyone else is dead, the kids will have to pick up the slack and get things done. They're the pawns doing the actual leg work in this chess metaphor.

On the backrow you have the tail end and survivors of the most recent generation of adults. They can't get their hands in the dirt anymore. They're too strong. They're wiley. The enemy knows these young guns are the ones they have to watch. So they play the slow game. They distract. They run interference. They make it so these poor fucking kids can cut their own arm off just to make it out alive. And you can't even blame them. They have an entire corrupt country ready to step on their necks if the young turks step too obviously out of line.

Because the real evil of the story are the old bastards. The generals. The king. The oldest monster in the country. They give the orders. They stay home while these young adults collected all their scars. There are a few good old folks still alive. Living like rats in the walls. And most of them have lists of sins they're making up for. Nations on the verge of extinction to avenge. Kids that need their bullet holes and stab wounds stitched. Prosthetics techniques to pass on.

Fullmetal Alchemist, among its many, many themes and tones is about the young usurping the old. The have-nothings taking their lives out of the hands of the old and corrupt. Children missing limbs fighting on the front lines, adults running interference as long as they possibly can, and all to stop a few old people from sacrificing everyone and everything for personal gain.

That's why this series makes people cry. It's a beautiful story beautifully told.

[justaratswriting]

Batfam and Mental Health

orOkay so I love Batman and all the things surrounding it. Like the idea of a random rich man who happens to be an orphan just suddenly adopting a ton of children is ridiculous, and thoroughly entertaining.

But I am also a big fan of psychology, and learning about the mind. So mental illness and related things are fascinating to me. 

I notice that like strangely there is very little stuff about the batfam having mental illnesses or dealing with psychology or therapy. Don’t get me wrong there is still a lot addressing these things, but still with the things the family experiences you would think it would be a lot more prevalent in the writing about them, and especially fan fiction about them.

Like I think showing mental health through  beloved characters would be really cool and could be a tool to destigmatize them. Like showing hero's with them would make really great representation, people could see them and think Oh I can still be a good person and helpful even if my mental disorder makes it hard and for things like depression or ADHD showing which misconceptions are harmful and don’t work. 

I can also see this in the physical aspect, like I wish a hero would have something like chronic pain or one of the many invisible illnesses. To give representation and show how pushing through the pain can shut a person down for days. 

The specific disorders I think would be really interesting of the top of my head is, depression, Anxiety, POTS, Fibromyalgia, Chronic pain, eating disorders, nerve damage, ADHD, Bipolar, OCD, Chronic fatigue, PTSD, c-PTSD, Autism, Elhers Danlos syndrome, And the one I really think would be interesting DID. 

Like fore depression, showing how hard it is to get out of bed. Not showing constantly being sad but showing how it can be numbing. Acknowledging that in a disorder like this logic doesn’t always win even if you are the most logical person to live. 

For anxiety showing how debilitating it can be. Looking into their minds to show the thought process, the mind fight itself and logic. Knowing their fears are unreasonable but not being able to shake the feeling. Show how for different people different things cause anxiety. 

POTS or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, (super simply put it is a circulation disorder where upon standing up blood rushes to extremities and can cause all sorts of problems like fainting, pain in your feet, Dizziness, poor temperature regulation, etc. Also I am assuming people know what depression and anxiety is.) would be fascinating to me. Like having a hero that is constantly sitting down or biting down and pushing through the pain even a hero that has to slowly stand up. So in the middle of a battle being shoved down having to slowly stand up or risk fainting or vision completely blacking out for a while. Showing a hero who has learned to fight with no sight because of that very thing. 

Or Fibromyalgia (This one I am a little less educated about but from what I understand, it is a disorder characterized by muscle pain and tenderness usually with no known cause, so from what I understand it usually is diagnosed after a ton of other disorders are eliminated and the pain is still occurring, often also has affect on sleep and memory/mood.) Like showing a hero having a particularly hard patrol and having to take a couple days off and constantly going places or trying things to help with the pain. 

Or Chronic pain ( from what I understand the main difference between Fibromyalgia and Chronic pain is chronic pain has to do with the nerves and Fibromyalgia has to do with muscles, also Fibromyalgia has other thins to go with it like energy levels and mental functions so memory/mood.) Like a hero having constant pain even if they didn’t have a big fight, maybe showing them icing, heating, or taking pain meds and the rest of the family or team being super confused as to why. Before they know showing them freak out and worry that they went on a mission without telling anyone. Showing how it is a constant battle, that sometimes treatments will work and other times, for seemingly no reason they won’t. 

I would also like to see eating disorders portrayed by the bat family. Showing how it’s not always a conscious choice, sometimes it is more along the lines of choosing something else over eating. Showing how people can use it for control or to punish themselves. Letting there be a male example, reminding people that they can happen to anyone. Allowing people to have representation. Show a recovery, how it is not impossible for anyone but not down playing how hard it is. It is a true and hard fight, and show how it can sneak up on you and drag you back. Not just one easy recovery, that recovery is a choice. You have to want it but you also need help, it is a long hard process and accessibility is everything. Show a family member making them food, show them sometimes eating it and others not. Also don’t only show under eating show how people can’t stop themselves from eating. Having cabinets locked to keep people out, for their own safety. 

Or nerve damage, showing how years of their work and fighting can really mess someone up. Show someone suddenly losing all feeling or sensation in certain parts of their body or constant pain or even pinched nerves. Show how confusing it can be to not know what you are feeling. Show how weird it can be when you realize you are fine or that nothing is touching you or taking it in the opposite direction and not realizing you are hurt or someone is trying to be your attention. I would also love to see the batfam explain any of these injuries to the hero community or to the public. Maybe show the hero community really starting to look into mental and general health services. 

ADHD or also ADD, showing how people can use it but also showing how hard it can be to control and fight. How much it can impede focusing and show situations it can put people in. Show a hero forgetting a huge part of their plan and falling but because of some random information from a hyper focus they still save the day. 

Bipolar, showing the wild swings and how confusing it can be. Feeling like a different person, struggling with identity and their own decisions. Show them accidently pushing people away but also how hard they work to maintain family and friends that despite how unpredictable they can be their friends still stick around. Or if their friends can’t handle it show them peacefully and respectfully stepping out of their life. Show how hard that can be to except but that the future can end up better than you could ever hope. 

OCD is really one I wish we saw in the hero's. Show their routines and things they do. Show the thought process, like if I don’t properly put the dishes away in fourteen seconds the joker will escape arkham. Show how terrifying the thoughts can be, but show how detail oriented it can make people and the beautiful art and amazing work that they can do. Show a person putting them selves at risk to comply with their routine. Like ignoring injuries to write a report. Show them and family or friends working to change the routine. Show how hard it is the moments they want to turn back and continue and how much they want to stop but show them not giving up and making the differences they want. Show them accomplishing things, show their compulsions actually keeping them safe.

Or even chronic fatigue, Show the fight each morning. Them saving energy, the disconnect between how exhausted you are mentally vs. physically. Show a hero that 50% of the time physically is too exhausted to be in the field so they offer technical support. Show a hero crashing, suddenly just not having enough energy to finish patrol or even get home. So someone has to come pick them up. Show them getting stuck in a fight and how hard it can be to do anything much less a fight. 

Let the characters have PTSD or c-PTSD, show flashbacks and being stuck in your head. All of the bat family has lived through horrors please show it affecting them. Show how they get help how they work through it show what can happen and how bad it can get if it is unaddressed.  

Show them having autism and how it is just a different way of life that there is nothing inherently wrong with it and how the ignorance that surrounds it and similar disorders can hurt and affect people. Show how it can be simple things that can show it or affect it. Try and look at it from their perspective and what things happen that should not just because they way someone is. 

Elhers Danlos syndrome, show the pain, the misdiagnosis, the process, the fight. Show how disabilities like this and several others including ones I have mentioned can cause a person to need medical equipment such as wheelchairs and braces. Show how not everyone using a wheelchair can’t walk. Show how limiting it can be and the precautions you have to take but don’t make everything about how hard it can be. Show how using a Wheelchair while not ideal can open up so many opportunities. Show them actually being able to go on family vacations and amusement parks because they have a wheelchair. Show how important it is to have ramps and accommodations for similar things so people can participate and so people can actually go places they want. Always show how hard people with disabilities and such work. Show them trying to get treatment and trying new treatments show how it isn’t as simple as getting a knee brace or two. 

And finally coming to one that absolutely fascinates me, DID or Dissociative Identity Disorder formerly known as multiple personality disorder. But don’t do this one completely uneducated, it is already a very stigmatized disorder. Show how Alters communicate. Show how they all work together and that they were made so the body and mind could survive. Make full characters just put them in one body. Show the confusion once they find out, show them slowly realizing and learning signs and what happened to them. Show each of the Alters having different friends and maybe understanding and knowing the family different. Show the different reasons and setups systems can have. Show system responsibility and each Alter working on themselves and to make a life for the system. Show the roles Alters will take. Show the horrible process of fragmenting and what things can cause it but also show healing and people supporting and accepting systems. 

Overall showing good parts of all the struggles people can have but not ignoring how hard they can be or glorifying them to people who don’t understand. Showing misconceptions and how support can affect these disorders. And most important in my mind, giving hope and a future to look forward to for the people with these disorders.